The song 'Lean on Me' by the amazing Kirk Franklin is a song that all of us should live our lives by. The song is about understanding, love, compassion, and helping one another, and it's something that the world seems to have lost over the years. Nowadays most people just look out for themselves, they're too greedy and self-involved to look around them and see how much other people are suffering. Things that everyday we take for granted like food and water, are some things that a lot of people all over the world simply don't have.

Listening to this song again today I started thinking about how selfish and judgemental human beings have become. A prime example, last week when the 4 day old baby was kidnapped in Nashville, TN after leaving the mother with several stab wounds, I saw so many articles about it online and with online articles come online comments. I can honestly say without a doubt in my mind that over 80% of those comments were negative, heinous comments that broke my heart to read. Instead of showing compassion or praying for the return of the baby to its family, people were on there criticizing the mother and questioning her legal status. I read through pages upon pages of comments where most of them were talking about how no one should care anyway because the mother was probably illegal and how the "roach" baby was better off not being here.
All of that was not only highly offensive and uncalled for, but it was painful to see where people's priorities are. This case, along with countless other things I see go on everyday led me to look for this song again and listen to it.

I was first exposed to this song in 8th grade in 2000. My chorus teacher always had us singing songs about being good, believing in yourself, just songs with morals and I always loved her for it. The first time she played this song, I was one of the ones that teared up with the powerful message and vocals of this song. It is by far one of the most powerful songs I've ever heard.

Everytime I listen to it and/or sing it, I start crying. There are so many things in the world that we could try to fix if we all learned to care, love, and respect each other. It shouldn't matter where we come from, what we look like, what color we are, what our ancestors did...none of that should matter. We all have feelings, we all cry. We all suffer and bleed. We all celebrate and love...we all have families that love us and that we love.

I wish I could make everyone think like this. We would avoid so many problems and troubles.

We really aren't that different.

With all this being said...I hope you take the time to read the lyrics and watch the video and maybe by spreading the message, we can make the world a better place.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/kirkfranklin/leanonme.html