Yesterday (22 September) we celebrated 30 years of the Fairtrade movement.
Rev Matthew Bicket exhorted us in a take on Romans 12 1-2 from World Vision:
‘
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, drinking coffee, supermarket shopping, going-to-work and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering.
Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for God. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your morning caffeine fix that you buy it each day without even thinking.
Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you (justice and mercy) and quickly respond to it.
Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of unfair global trade rules and mass consumer marketing, God brings the best out of you, developing well-formed maturity in you
In our own strength we will give in to the cheaper product, to the forgetfulness of our neighbour, but scripture says, ‘be transformed by the renewal of your mind by the Spirit of God.’
At a True aorigins/Fairtrade stall after worship the congregation bought £482.10 worth of goods.