Lean on Me

I am a people watcher, I admit it, and today as I was walking into the hospital I started noticing something. There is an area with tables and benches as you walk up to the front doors and there I saw a man who was standing about a foot away from one of the black, fancy iron tables but he was leaning over on the table with both elbows doing something on his IPhone. I thought it looked funny, I then noticed across the sidewalk a lady standing in front of a similar table leaning against it with her backside. As I walked on into the lobby it became funny to me, everyone I saw was leaning against or on something and then I got on the elevator and I realized that I had leaned my back against the wall to rest it as I rode up to the third floor. Maybe we are just all tired, or maybe it’s easier to lean than to stand without the aid of a wall, table or crutch to lean on.

Bill Withers wrote a song that says, “Lean on me when you’re not strong, I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on, for it won’t be long till I’m gonna need somebody to lean on.”

As that song played in my brain I was remembering men with bell bottom pants and platform shoes and girls with long straight hair and peasant dresses, 1972, a long time ago. But then my mind went further back to when I was a little girl and heard the church singing Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. When they got to the chorus and sang “Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarm” I looked around and felt embarrassed that the whole church was singing about me, I was sure of it. To my young ears I was hearing “Leenie, Leenie, etc.” and since my mother’s nickname for me was Leenie, well you know the rest.

The truth is if you need to lean on someone it’s a better idea to lean on the everlasting arms of Jesus than on the edge of a table, or the wall of an elevator for He will never let you fall.