I’m sure we can all think of places we have travelled to where the market vendors were enthusiastically happy to promote their wares to all comers, tourist or local.
The bustle and variety of Asia, or the romance of Europe, with all their sights, sounds and odours.
We lived in France for a year in the early 1970s, before there were EU rules and regulations about pasteurising and shrink wrapping everything, and very often the produce was still running around before the purchaser decided which one was wanted and the cleaver came out to dispatch it. What really used to amaze me was the fungi from the forest people used to eat.
Actually, one of the most enduring childhood memories I have of that time, is of a couple of Breton fishermen running up a rocky beach path hauling a large sack directly towards our family.
‘Madame, Monsieur ! Alors!’ Panting up on their arrival, they tipped their catch of rather large, very much still alive crabs in front of my mother, who it has to be said, is not a French woman, and has a lifelong and intense dislike of anything with more than four legs, especially when it’s angrily clacking its claws at her.
We British folk tend to prefer our seafood shrink-wrapped or crumbed and deep-fried, not still walking around.
This week we consider Isaiah 55, and God's market offering:
Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labour for that which does not satisfy?
There is no catch to God's offering of eternal life and spiritual sustenance. It is a free gift, if we will only receive it through Jesus Christ.
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