We are now many weeks after Easter and all the Easter eggs are probably long gone.
Did you know that chocolate was around over 1400 years ago?
600AD – Mayans drank a cold drink made from cacao beans
1325AD – Aztecs make a drink with honey and cocoa. They believed that eating cacao beans gave one wisdom and power.
1504 – Christopher Columbus brought cocoa to Spain, and they didn’t know what to do with them!
1657-the first chocolate house was opened in London, and was only accessible to the rich and famous
1687 – milk was added to chocolate to improve the bitter taste. Hans Sloane sold his recipe as a medicine for various diseases
1847 – Fry & Son produced the first chocolate bar to be sold in solid form
1879 – Rodolph Lindt discovered how to refine chocolate into a mould-able form.
1991- Traidcraft import the 1st fair trade chocolate bars.
The terms cacao and cocoa are interchangeable, and are produced from the tree Theobroma Cacao which grows natively in Central America. The tree’s name means “food of the gods”.
The Mayans valued chocolate as worth more than gold, and used it as currency. Today, many of the Central American farmers that grow the cacao beans have never tasted chocolate, because they are so poor they cannot afford to buy some of their own finished product.
And this is the most disturbing fact of all – in the UK we eat an average of 11kg of chocolate EACH per year!
If you don’t like chocolate, then someone else is probably eating your share of that 11kg!
So chocolate is the food of the gods, it is worth more than gold, and is only available to those who can afford it.
Give us our daily bread – God already does, yet we fail to share it out with others. One of the consequences of the war in Ukraine is likely to be a global food crisis. Yet we in the rich minority countries of the world will be unlikely to experience the full effect of that food shortage. It will be countries that were already suffering from food poverty and famine.
This part of the prayer, however, is not just about physical food, but also about spiritual food and we all need to pray for that.
Prayer: Give us this day our daily bread. Merciful Father, we pray for those countries in the world where hunger is an everyday fact of life and death, where the majority of children suffer malnutrition and it’s long term effects. We pray for the countries of the world that produce food for others and for the farmers who produce the crops. Help resources reach those areas of most need ao that children can grow and live heathy lives. We pray for ourselves, that you will provide our basic needs physical, emotional and spiritual. AMEN