21 Proverbs for the Digital Age
On beauty, money, family, prayer, dancing, traffic tickets, and other things.
This past week I taught my last class of the year with the VB Fellows. At the end, I do my best to summarize many of the practical things we learned over the course of the year with a list of “proverbs.” (I also have them each write their own proverbs, many of which were better than mine!) The key word here is practical. These are not just belief statements, but things you can actually do, or else ways to make new meaning out of things you’re already doing. After all, the stated goal of the class was:
To embody spiritual realities and spiritualize embodied experiences.
Proverb-writing is pretty fun. I treat it as a a kind of personal challenge to see how succinctly I can put things that often took me decades to figure out and hours in the classroom to explain and justify. But for that very reason, I hesitate to share. Without further context, some of these will seem trite, banal, or perhaps bewildering. But brevity is not my strong suit, so I figured I’d bless my dear readers with something pithy for a change! This is my list of Proverbs for 2026 (with some brief explanations). I hope you enjoy.
— Ross
Do not trade beauty and goodness for truth.
Be poets and musicians and bakers and decorators and party-throwers and parents and friends.
The truth is found in the embodiment of what is beautiful and good. Otherwise it is false, even if it is true.
Make space for God. Remember the Sabbath, the unseen 7th part of everything.
Fast from fullness and busy-ness. Make rhythms that continually return to rest and mystery. Welcome all seasons, even winter.
Money is a trick, but you can trick the trickster. Become rich in the unseen bank.
Trade money for trust & trustworthiness and you’ll be rich (even now) in a way that moth & rust cannot destroy.
Be like Robin Hood. Feast & dance in Sherwood Forest. Bless Nottingham w/o relying on it or obeying its rules.
Be more religious. Pray on your knees. Feast and fast. Sing and be silent.
Do not reinvent the wheel. The church has been cutting paths through the wilderness for 2000 years. Join her.
Honor your father and mother by redeeming them in you.
Remember & respect the givenness of life. If you don’t learn to leverage it, you will carry it as a burden.
You are, to some extent, the product of your people & place. You cannot avoid this, but you can redeem it.
Embrace the “slave phases” that lead to deeper mastery. Do not avoid them.
Mastery and authority come through humility and servitude. If you enter like a child, soon you’ll be fathers & mothers.
Roots before fruit. Farmer before architect.
The internet is full of fruit w/o roots. But you: do what grows roots. The fruit will come.
Be a farmer of your future, not an architect. Till the soil. God will bring fruit in his time and way.
Whether man or woman, you are called to be a home-maker. Make a home.
Take care not to be owned by the machine. Choose family-shaped jobs rather than a job-shaped family.
Pray wordless prayers in the car. Show your face to God, and he will show you his.
Turn off the noise. A car can be a sacred space. Groan to God there. Tell him—and ask him for—what words cannot express.
When God is pruning you, he is holding you close.
No amount of pain is wasted with him. Even when you feel far away and confused, he is holding you.
Even anxiety, depression, grief, and trauma have a purpose in Him; they are reminder alarms to pray & trust.
You cannot see what you are not paying attention to.
Be present. Attend. Swear off false attention magnets, and worship God alone. Worship precedes wisdom, morality, and peace.
Repentance is not just about confessing sin. It’s about re-orienting your attention toward God, the Center. So repent daily.
Resist the disembodiment of the internet and the automobile. Love your neighbor and your neighborhood.
Despite what the modern world tells you, you are a body. Be in it, and help others to do the same.
Play the long game. A good thing that is not sustainable is not a very good thing.
Set small goals. Everything in baby steps. Love neighbor > love everyone.
Do specific things well. Don’t be overly concerned with “impact.” Remember how Jesus saved the world.
Invest where you are least fungible. Be a member of a body, not an individual in a web.
Modern “communities” are flattened webs devoted to mutual individualistic consumerism (where we wait to be eaten).
The body of Christ is a living organism made of many diverse parts which belong to one purpose and head.
The Christian life is participation, more like a dance than a doctrine.
If you love, you will know that you are loved. If you only want to know about him, you will never know him.
The wind blows where it pleases. Learn to trim your sails to it. Attune yourself more & more to its subtle ways.
95% of evangelism is tilling the soil of other people’s hearts.
Love is not a laser beam, and the truth is not a sentence. Love is a relationship, and the truth is a Person.
Wherever you go, aim to make fertile soil out of the rocks and thorns of other people’s hearts.
Let every stubbed toe and traffic ticket be God to you. Love loves unto purity.
Inconveniences and disappointments have a purpose, if you have eyes to see. He disciplines those he loves.
Even if he isn’t the cause of your pain, what the devil means for evil, God uses for our good (if you trust him).
Choose your rituals wisely. Do not let them choose you. You are what you habitually do.
You are an orbiting being. You cannot stop orbiting, but you can trade bad orbits for good ones.
Authenticity = Integrity + Conformity | Align your Creeds, Deeds, & Needs
Dress up for church. If nothing is sacred, then nothing is sacred.
Don’t let your whole life become common. Pursue holiness, which is neither the same as morality nor the same as passion.
Set apart certain times, certain spaces, certain people, certain skills, even certain group chats…for holy purposes.
Listen to Jesus and obey him alone. Drink deep from his well.
The water on the surface is easily accessible, but it’s also warm and full of floating sediment.
The deeper draughts are cold and dark and hard to access. You may even have to jump in. Be brave. Jump.
Above all else…abide. Be confused and disappointed by God, and yet stay.
“If you abide...you are truly my disciples. And you will know the truth, and truth will set you free.”
I need to sit with each one of these for a week at a time. So good, thank you!
Well said!