The Company We Keep

We become the company we keep.  This is a truism because it is powerfully true.  We become like those with whom we spend time.  We pick up their expressions, quirks, habits, and characteristics.  With  time their influence goes deeper than acquiring their characteristics. We may also internalize their  character.

 We don’t always have a choice with whom we spend large swaths of time.  The person next door, or in the work place, or community may not be our first or even twenty-fifth choice.  However, we do have choices in what we do with much of our time.   Given the limitations on our time, prudence dictates choosing wisely knowing there are eternal consequences from how we spend our time and with whom. 

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Here’s what I aspire to in keeping the company of others.  I want to spend everyday in the presence of Christ knowing him more and more completely.  In becoming increasingly acquainted with him, I hope to grow in intimacy with my Lord and Savior, my Creator, the one who restores me to his likeness and holiness, the one who fills my heart and life with himself and his pure love.  Time in the Word, in prayer, in fellowship with living saints, and exposures to all the means of grace possible, are the ways and means of keeping company with my Lord.

I aspire as well to keep company with others who keep company with Jesus.  They include the poor in spirit,  the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful,  and the pure in heart.  In short, they are those who obediently walk in holiness because of the sacred company they keep.  Some of them are alive and are my dear friends.  Others I’ve not met yet, but I remain excited about those to whom Christ is yet to introduce me.   Some of the saints with whom I keep company are long gone to their eternal reward and yet I keep company with them through their writings and music:  John Wesley, Charles Wesley, John Gowans,  Albert Orsborn, Sidney Cox, Catherine Baird and so many others.  The challenge comes in also keeping company with those in whom we see Christ:  the poor, the marginalized and dispossessed, the down and out, the unlovely.  Albert Orsborn's beautiful song pens our response:  Unless I am moved with compassion, how dwellest thy Spirit in me.

So, with whom are you keeping company? Knowing that we become like those  with whom we hang out, like those whose company we keep. Who’s company do you cherish?Whose  company do you need to give up?  It’s all a matter of managing the limited time we have and making the best choices.  Best blessings as you sort it out!