A Coal Miner's Son Remembers

In 1972, Bill Withers released Lean on Me, a song that would become one of the most recognized anthems of mutual support ever written. But the song didn't come from nowhere. It came from Slab Fork, West Virginia — a tiny coal mining town where Withers grew up as the youngest of six children.

Slab Fork was poor. But Withers later recalled that what the town lacked in money, it made up for in neighborliness. When someone's furnace broke, another family took them in. When a miner was injured, the whole community showed up with food and presence. Nobody had much, but nobody went without, because people carried each other.

Years later, sitting at a piano in Los Angeles, Withers found himself playing a simple melody and singing words that had lived inside him since childhood: "Lean on me, when you're not strong, and I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on."

He wasn't writing theory. He was writing testimony.

The Apostle Paul told the Galatians, "Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." That verse isn't a suggestion for the exceptionally generous. It's a description of what the body of Christ looks like when it's functioning — people leaning in, showing up, sharing the weight.

The Most High never designed faith to be carried alone. Like the people of Slab Fork, we were made to be the kind of community someone writes a song about.