Preparing Our Hearts for Easter: Day 25 – Buy FAIRTRADE

An article by Frank    No Comments

In the lead up to Easter we will be putting up a new lent devotion each week day. These devotions will also be available in the discussions section of our Facebook page and will be played on New Zealand’s Rhema.

Do you ever give much thought to where the things you purchase come from? Have you ever wondered what the chain of people and production looks like from the very collection of the fabric in your clothes for instance, right through to the point of sale where it becomes your latest possession.

It’s such a faceless process isn’t it? It is certainly faceless on one level, but is anything but faceless on another – there are a myriad of people involved in producing and supplying the products we use all the time, yet how many of us give any real thought to their lives? God does.

God’s concern is in place for everything – those items that we purchase, God cares intimately about every face that played a part in getting them into our hands. He cares about how they are treated, their working conditions and the livelihood they have to etch out from whatever they make for being part of that process.

If God cares then shouldn’t we? Far from being engaging in faceless purchases, when we as Christians buy things it should carry a sense of care for how those products came about – what impact did their production have on the environment, what impact will their use have? How were the people involved in the production of our products treated? Were they paid fairly? Were they working in ethical conditions? If God cares, we should too.

It’s hard to carry that ethos with every purchase and it’s near on impossible to escape products that entail some form of abuse in their production – but where we can buy more ethically, we should. To put it bluntly; where and when you can, buy Fairtrade, proven ethically produced products, or buy less.

Pray

Jesus, help to make our purchases more real – not just a faceless acquirement of products. Help us to be conscious of the human and environmental cost of the things we buy and open up to us ways to be more ethical in our approach to consuming.

Amen