lean on me...

Junie B ran away from home Tuesday afternoon. We looked high and low all over the farm, called the neighbors, walked the hills and woods fearing she had stepped in a hole or gotten hung in an old fence line. She was nowhere to be found. Yesterday my friend Leisa widened the circle and began searching on neighboring farms and nearby roads. Junie B had been spotted at the end of Mountain Tea Road by our postmistress who thought she belonged to another neighbor. I went and met the neighbor who does own a gelding look-a-like for Junie B. She promised to keep an eye out for her. Leisa remembered horses at the end of Monnie Jones Road, a road that ends near the back of our farm. While I walked the old post road that runs through our community and by our farm following Junie B’s tracks, Leisa went to Monnie Jones. There she was in a pasture occupied by one other lonely brown filly. Leisa came and got me and we drove to get Junie B to bring her home.
She stood at the gate with her new friend at her side, their heads snuggled up to one another. Leisa and I began walking her up the road with the little brown horse close by. The two horses spoke, nickering, and watched to make sure they were still together. The little brown horse came most of the way as we walked the old dirt road towards home but left us as we neared the back of our farm. Junie B stood and watched her leave. I felt like a heel for separating these two new friends.
Last night I was supposed to be at a special gathering of Piecemakers at Leslie’s house. Her son Michael died this week and our group was coming to her house with food and drink. Our hearts are heavy as we imagine the depth of the sorrow she must be feeling. We needed to be together for Leslie’s sake and for our own as she begins a new life in this world without the presence of her son. Like Junie B, we needed to be with our friends.
After the crucifixion and burial, on the one day when Jesus was dead all day long, his friends gathered in a safe place to be together as they began their new life without Jesus. Fear, sadness, disbelief, shock, grief, anger... the feelings we all have when some terrible awful death comes to one we love. There they were in that room remembering and telling stories, trying to decide what to do next, where to go, how to pick up the pieces. I wonder if any of them remembered Jesus saying where two or three of you are gathered in my name, I am in the middle of you?
According to the story, Jesus did appear to them and was for a short while back in the land of the living. For the rest of us, we live with the faith knowledge that Jesus’ presence, though not visible to our eyes, is a part of all our gatherings in his name. We are more than friends. We, who gather in faith believing that God is with us as we weep for the deaths of those we love, are the embodiment of Jesus on earth. We say death is not the end of all life, just the end of life as we have known it here on earth. We say weep, grieve and know that somewhere, somehow, our God holds you with loving arms and shares your sorrows. Like Junie B and her friend, God is nestled up close to us and yearns over our broken hearts. And while we wait for joy to come again in the morning, we will gather and lean on one another resting in the arms of Jesus that surround us.