COP30 - 13 November 2025
God's voice takes us outside our comfort zone

Reflection

We all have them, and when we were young, whether we wanted to or not, they were constantly challenged. However, it seems that the older we get, the easier it is to stay well inside them. We're talking about our personal comfort zones. There are many reasons why we tend to stay in comfortable places, a lot of them related to our perception of self (e.g. self doubt, a desire to maintain control, fear of failure, fear of rejection, a desire for certainty, a lack of confidence) and some to do with circumstances (e.g. lack of experience, lack of time).

We all need a comfort zone to be able to function healthily, a safe place where we are confident of our ability to cope and where outcomes are predictable, and we suspect that you’re in a minority if you truly enjoy the heightened stress levels associated with stepping beyond it. But psychologists tell us, and our experience confirms it, that the times we spend outside our safe place are often our times of real growth. And the Bible has many examples of God encouraging people out of their comfort zones so that they can be part of his bigger plan.

Today's reading is such an example and it concerns an interaction between the apostle Peter and God, depicted in the reading as A Voice. Surely there could be a much better example of a comfort-seeker than the first leader of the Christian church, who preaches the often unpopular gospel of Christ, who travels on missionary journeys and who has already been imprisoned for his faith? Well, in this instance no, because today's reading speaks to something that can often keep us in safe places because we're unaware of it in ourselves: prejudice.

In the reading, the hungry Peter is presented, in a vision, with a melange of four-footed animals, reptiles and birds and told to kill and eat, but he can't because his life is underpinned by decades of Jewish teaching that tell him this is wrong. These animals are all unclean in the eyes of a devout Jew, or rendered unclean by association, and so he refuses, not once, but three times. He reacts in a morally right way according to his upbringing and religious teaching, but God, whose plan for salvation and reconciliation includes the so-called 'unclean' Gentiles, calls him out on it. The boundaries of Peter's comfort zone are about to be drastically changed.

There is a hint in today's reading that Peter was already on a journey to unlearn some of the prejudices of his faith upbringing, because he was staying in the house of Simon the Tanner. Tanners worked with the bodies of dead animals, and were therefore permanently unclean, so a strict Jew would never accept hospitality from such a person. Perhaps we can take some comfort from the thought that God often moves the boundary of our comfort zone little by little, and not in a single 'You're wrong, now change' kind of way.

And a final word on comfort zones. Psychologists tell us we need them for healthy living, that they provide a safe place to move out from and return to.  We don't think God is against us feeling comfortable, but we have learned that often, to be effective for him, we have to feel a certain level of discomfort. And so we ask ourselves today, where are we too comfortable?

Response

Reading and reflecting on today’s passage, we wondered what long-held beliefs we have which might be getting in the way of God's purpose for us? And since we're in COP fortnight, perhaps we could also consider whether he would call out long-held prejudices that prevent us from taking the stand he would have us take for the protection of his creation and for the rights of our unseen neighbours? This  will be different for each of us.