By Rebecca Barnes, Coordinator of the Presbyterian Hunger Program
To those living in famine in Africa and the Middle East, your gift to One Great Hour of Sharing makes a difference. To widows learning how to fight for land titles to stay on their deceased husband’s land so they may continue to care for their farm and family, your gift makes a difference. To those who are trying to raise new generations of farmers here in the United States, your gift makes a difference. To those organizing to recover lost wages and halt wage theft, your gift makes a difference.
When you give to One Great Hour of Sharing, you are participating in amazing, inspiring and hopeful work to make God’s creation a place where all people have enough and where all creation is thriving.
I am blessed and so grateful as the Coordinator of PHP to continue to get to learn and witness the effects we are able to have in the world because of your generosity and the hard work of our many grantee partners. Your gifts really do make an impact. You can download the 2017 Impact Report or the 2018 Grant Report (to read the names of partners for 2018) here, but there’s no easy way to communicate how each one of those organizations is doing such a big thing to move the world closer to a place without hunger, poverty, and injustice.
This year celebrates the 70th anniversary of One Great Hour of Sharing, an offering received in Presbyterian churches nation-wide at Lent/Easter for overseas relief, response to disasters, interchurch aid, and refugee resettlement in the 1950s.
When the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. became the first denomination in the United States to declare hunger as a top priority for the church in 1969, hunger ministries soon became a part of this important offering as well.
So this year, Presbyterian Hunger Program is celebrating 50 years and OGHS is celebrating 70 years! As we celebrate, we invite you to join us!
- We celebrate the generosity of Presbyterians in sharing what we have in our abundance so that others who have little can have enough.
- We celebrate your participation in the Offering and your plans this week and next to collect the Offering, which supports not only PHP but also Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and Self-Development of People.
- We celebrate that no matter what we give, God always magnifies the gift.
May God continue to bless the church and the world, and to use us and our giving as ways to do so.
For resources for OGHS, click here.