The words in the margin
The Latin
Scroll any page on this site and four short Latin lines move down the left edge with you. A fifth one closes the footer of every page. They are not decoration, and they are not there to sound old. They are the shortest way I know to say the four things a man does on watch, and the one reason any of it is worth doing.
Latin because these lines were carried by men long before me, worn on stone and steel by watchmen who are all dead now and whose posts still stood when they were gone. Short because a man in a hard moment cannot hold a paragraph. He can hold three words.
The first move
Ora Deum
Pray to God
ora — imperative of orare, to pray, to plead Deum — God, as the direct object
Not think about God. Not read about Him. Speak to Him. It is an imperative, a command given to one man, and it is the first thing on the list because it is the first thing that goes. A man under pressure will work, drink, scroll, fix, rage, and organize before he will pray, and every one of those is easier.
It is also the shortest possible answer to the excuse I hear most: I do not know how. There is nothing here about words, posture, or being qualified. Two words. Address God. That is the whole instruction.
Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving.
Colossians 4:2
if you only ever learn one of these, learn this one
The honest ask
Deus, da mihi robur
God, give me strength
da — give, imperative mihi — to me robur — hard strength; oak, timber, the load-bearing kind
This is the prayer of a man who has run out. Robur is not enthusiasm or willpower, it is the strength of oak, the kind you build with, and the point of asking is the admission underneath it: I do not have this. I cannot generate it. Give it to me.
Most men will not say that sentence out loud to anyone. Saying it to God is not weakness, it is the only accurate report you have ever filed. And it is the line that keeps the whole thing from turning into self-improvement, because a man who is asking for strength has already conceded he is not the source of it.
He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might He increases power.
Isaiah 40:29
the day this one gets easy to say is the day you turn a corner
The ground you stand on
Dei gratia
By the grace of God
Dei — of God gratia — grace, favor freely given
Two words that kings put on coins and that a man ought to put on his whole life. Not by my discipline. Not because I finally got it together. By the grace of God, and no other reason, I am standing here at all.
This is the one that guards against both ditches. On a good week it stops you crediting yourself. On a bad week it stops you thinking you have been cut off, because grace was never a wage in the first place. Nothing about your standing before God was ever earned, which means nothing about it can be un-earned by your worst month.
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain.
1 Corinthians 15:10
you did not earn the ground you are standing on
The posture
Esto vigilans
Be watchful
esto — be, the standing imperative of esse vigilans — awake, alert, on watch
The oldest job in Scripture. A watchman does not fight all night, he stays awake all night, and the failure mode is not losing a battle, it is sleeping through one. Esto is a standing order, not a one-time command: keep being this.
This is where the whole site gets its name. What comes for a man's house usually does not kick the door in, it drifts in while everyone is comfortable. Watchfulness is the unglamorous discipline of noticing early, over years, when nothing appears to be happening.
Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
1 Corinthians 16:13
stand your watch. i'll stand mine.
The line at the bottom of every page
Soli Deo Gloria
To God alone be the glory
The other four are things a man does. This one is the reason, and it is the only one of the five that is not about you at all.
It sits at the bottom of every page on purpose. If a man reads what I write, prays one honest prayer, gets off the floor and stands his watch, and then walks away thinking Jake had good words, then the whole thing failed. I did not rescue anybody. I was rescued. Every line on this site is a receipt for work someone else did.
It is also the guardrail on the other four. Pray, ask for strength, live on grace, stay awake, and you can still do all of it for your own name. Men have built whole reputations on being the strong one. Soli Deo Gloria is the line that keeps a watchman from becoming his own idol.
Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31
The Reformers signed their work with it. Bach wrote the initials at the end of his manuscripts, page after page, for a lifetime. Not as a brand. As a habit of pointing away from himself. That is the habit I am after.
if this site ever makes much of me, it has stopped working
Why five Latin lines and not a paragraph
Because a man in trouble does not reach for a paragraph. He reaches for whatever is short enough to still be in his hands when everything else has been knocked out of them. Soldiers get callsigns. Sailors get watchwords. There is a reason.
Read them in order and they are the whole shape of a day: you pray, you ask for strength you do not have, you live on grace you did not earn, you stay awake at your post. And the reason under all four is that God gets the credit.
The five, in order
Ora DeumPray to God
Deus, da mihi roburGod, give me strength
Dei gratiaBy the grace of God
Esto vigilansBe watchful
Soli Deo GloriaTo God alone the glory