COP30 - 13 November 2025
God's voice takes us outside our comfort zone
God's voice takes us outside our comfort zone
The essence of a Christian comfort zone is not simply resting peacefully in God’s promises (which is a biblical command), but it is the boundary we draw around our willingness to trust and obey God. The believer stands at risk if that boundary keeps faith from being stretched.
(Bible Hub)
9 Just as these men were nearing Joppa about noon the next day, Peter went up on the flat rooftop of Simon the tanner’s house. He planned to pray, 10 but he soon grew hungry. While his lunch was being prepared, Peter had a vision of his own—a vision that linked his present hunger with what was about to happen: 11 A rift opened in the sky, and a wide container—something like a huge sheet suspended by its four corners—descended through the torn opening toward the ground. 12 This container teemed with four-footed animals, creatures that crawl, and birds—pigs, bats, lizards, snakes, frogs, toads, and vultures.
A Voice: 13 Get up, Peter! Kill! Eat!
Peter: 14 No way, Lord! These animals are forbidden in the dietary laws of the Hebrew Scriptures! I’ve never eaten nonkosher foods like these before—not once in my life!
A Voice: 15 If God calls something permissible and clean, you must not call it forbidden and dirty!
16 Peter saw this vision three times; but the third time, the container of animals flew up through the rift in the sky, the rift healed, 17 and Peter was confused and unsettled as he tried to make sense of this strange vision.
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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?
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.
Today is the second day of two considering the themes of heath, jobs, education, culture, justice and human rights, information integrity, global ethical stocktake and workers. We consider the global ethical stocktake.
"If we already know what needs to be done to tackle the climate crisis, why are we not doing it?” This central question drives the Global Ethical Stocktake, a groundbreaking initiative jointly launched by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The initiative is supported by the COP30 Presidency. In a series of international conferences (the last one was in September) the Global Ethical Stocktake brings together social, cultural, spiritual, business, science and political groups. In this way, it is hoped, a Civil Society voice can be brought to bear: insisting on the moral aspect in our response to climate change. More can be found out here.
COP30 Website
UN Climate Change COP30 Website
Lord, it’s easy to be cynical or shut off from the issues around me. But equally, I can find myself becoming overwhelmed in the face of the sheer amount of need. Would You help my heart to stay soft, and my eyes to stay open, as I seek to discern my unique contribution to Your kingdom coming on earth as in heaven. I pray for behaviour changes globally at every level, from individuals to communities to major world leaders, that will improve the situation and start to repair the damage caused by the climate crisis.
From Lectio 365 (27 Oct 2023) and tearfundWe know that meat production contributes significantly to environmental degradation through greenhouse gas emissions (primarily through the release of methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide), deforestation (huge areas of forest have to be cleared to create pastures and to grow crops to feed animals), water pollution and consumption as well as land degradation (see e.g. and article in The Conversation). So eating less meat has to be good for the environment, and we're also told that it's good for our health - a double gain.
If you can’t bear to give up meat completely, eat less meat - try a Meatless Monday (or any other day of the week, if you can manage without the alliteration) - and use the money you save to eat better quality meat. I ate less meat for several years, until the chefs in my family became pescatarians and Covid brought us all together under one roof. I emerged from lockdown as an unintentional pescatarian but I don't miss meat at all now. I'm not the main chef in my household, but I've become pretty adept at this Vegetable and Cashew Curry and the recipe has been requested many times by friends.