DAY 11: Buy fairtrade

‘The woman said to Jesus “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water”.’ John 4:15

There can be real power in sharing a drink together: someone lonely feels loved; a friend feels listened to; someone can be introduced to Jesus for the first time…

We generally don’t find it hard to share a drink with someone we know and enjoy spending time with, but how often do we invite someone new for a drink? How often do we go for a coffee that changes things?

For the woman at the well, it all began with Jesus asking her for a drink of water, when no one else would interact with her. Jesus used a drink as an opportunity to turn her whole life around.

Two thousand years later and coffee could be seen as today’s ‘water’. The office, coffee shop, kitchen or church can all become the new ‘well’ for us and whoever God invites to meet us there.

Why not make a commitment now to say hi to the person God has put next to you at work, where you live, or in church on Sunday, and initiate a coffee (Fairtrade, of course)? The conversation hasn’t got to be heavy, but if we show genuine interest and care for someone, God only knows how it will end.

As the director of a Fairtrade coffee provider, I love knowing that each of your coffee-dates could not only change things in a new friend’s life, but can also change things for a hard-working Fairtrade coffee farmer overseas. If each reader of today’s 40acts challenge does this even just once a week, during Lent alone we could have 70,000 powerful encounters between us!

The woman at the well went away and told her whole village the news and caused transformation in that place – and all over a drink with Jesus…