Seeing that it is Easter, imagine for a moment that you are a 70-year-old and it’s the first time you are tasting chocolate. This was the case for Agustina Zomelo, who lives in Ghana which is the world’s second-largest cocoa bean producer. And Agustina is one of those cocoa bean farmers. “Their life’s work is exported to industrialised nations, such as the United Kingdom and South Africa, where cocoa beans are ground, mixed with sugar and made into chocolate. Once the cocoa beans leave the farmer’s hands, that farmer never sees them again, nor the brown gold they produce - so loved the world over.”
In 2014, a YouTube video aired showing cocoa bean farmers from the Ivory Coast tasting chocolate for the first time. The Ivory Coast is the world’s largest producer of cacao. It is hard labour and the returns are meagre considering how much profit the large chocolate producers are making. At the time of the video, N’Da Alphonse supported 15 family members and 4 labourers on $9.40 a day, a chocolate bar would cost him a third of that salary. When a reporter from an international news website offered Alphonse his first taste ever of chocolate he said, “Mmm, I didn’t know that cocao was so yummy!” They immediately go to share the bar with the other cacao farmers with him. One of them says, “We complain because growing cocao is hard work. Now we enjoy the result. What a privilege to taste it!”
Psalm 34:8 says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!” Many people go through life, like Agustina, not knowing that God wants us to experience His goodness. Just as seeing chocolate is not the same as putting a piece in your mouth to experience its taste, so only knowing about God is not the same as having a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ. And that is what Easter is all about, God reaching into our lives and inviting us to walk with Him through life so that we can experience ‘eternal life.’ Not just life forevermore but a quality of life now. How will you respond to God’s invitation today?
[watch the video of the cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast for yourself here:
https://www.theloop.ca/cocoa-farmers-eating-chocolate-for-the-first-time-is-just-lovely/]