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Good morning. How many people would it take, standing in a line hand in hand, to reach across America from coast to coast?

The answer - not worked out only in theory - is 6.5 million. And we know this because 30 years ago today on 25th May 1986 a campaign entitled Hands Across America created a chain of approximately 6.5 million people who held hands for fifteen minutes along a pathway across the United States. Many of the participants donated ten dollars to reserve their place in the line and the proceeds were donated to charity to fight hunger and homelessness and to help those in poverty.

It’s not for this time of the morning to go into an analysis of the successes and failures of that campaign, but it is for this time of the morning to think about the idea and the concept of so many people linked together in common cause.

Hands Across America came just a couple of years after Bob Geldof and others made us ever more aware that the world is a global village.

Of course, in the great scheme of things - 30 years is nothing. But many things I’ve seen in the world, not least during my time as Moderator of the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly, have led me to believe that it’s 30 years over which we have become more sensitive to the needs of others, more committed to fighting against poverty and the injustices that cause it. So - we stay committed to joining hands across the world to consign poverty to the dustbin of  history.

God, it could be any one of us – hungry, stateless, homeless, poor, may we not rest until everyone in our global village has enough to eat, a roof overhead, a purpose in life and a government that protects them. AMEN