Time & Perspective Quote by Patrick Gordon

Mortality hangs over Patrick Gordon's prayer like a drawn sword, which makes its humility feel less like pious ornament and more like a veteran's field report. A 17th-century soldier who spent his life in the churn of European wars and political upheaval, Gordon writes with the blunt accounting of someone who has watched time get cut short for others. The first clause is almost bureaucratic in its gratitude: "spairing my life so long". It implies a ledger of near-misses and deserved punishments deferred, not a cozy sense of being blessed.

The key move is how he frames survival as debt. God is "long suffering" toward him, an old theological phrase that shifts the spotlight from Gordon's virtue to God's patience. Subtext: if he's still alive, it's not because he's earned it; it's because judgment has been postponed. That posture fits a world where sudden death was common and spiritual self-scrutiny was a daily discipline, especially for someone whose profession required sanctioned violence.

Then comes the anxious hinge: time is not simply given, it's "granted yet" - provisional, revocable, on loan. He asks not for victory or safety but for "good use" of whatever remains, and specifically for repentance. That's not abstract guilt; it's a soldier's recognition that his trade complicates the soul. The intent is practical: convert leftover life into moral repair before the window closes. The prayer works because it fuses theology with lived risk, turning survival into a ticking deadline rather than a triumph.