the least of these.

A man was walking down a beach the morning after a storm. He saw that the storm had washed up millions of starfish, as far as the eye could see, stretching out in either direction.

In the distance he could see a boy, and as he got closer he saw that every now and then the boy was picking up a starfish and throwing into the ocean.

He approached the boy and asked “Why are you throwing the starfish back into the ocean?”. The boy replied, “The sun is up, the tide is going out and if I don’t throw them back, they’ll die”. “But there must be millions of these starfish, you can’t possibly make a difference!”

The boy picked up a starfish, threw it into the ocean and said “Well it made a difference for that one”

In the same way, everyone matters to God.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus said “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”. When Jesus said ‘the least’ he means the downtrodden, the poor, the oppressed, the outcast, the widow, the orphan. Followers of Jesus are called to love God and love others.

I shared this starfish story with my church on our Fair Trade Launch day, where we celebrated becoming a Fair Trade Community with a taste testing morning tea (& supper), a Fair Trade Handicraft stall and a Fair Trade themed service.

I am so excited about the potential that a community has when they band together for a cause they care about. I had some fantastic conversations with people who were eager to know more about the details of Fair Trade.

Together, we celebrated the difference that Fair Trade makes in the lives of poor and marginalised producers. Fairtrade certification ensures that the people that we don’t see in the production of a product are cared for properly.

Let us participate in making the world a better place for all, demanding fair conditions for the disadvantaged.