The Golden Hour
2026
There comes a golden hour in the day when the light grows warm and long, illuminating familiar things in a different way. Perhaps there is a golden hour in life as well—a season when we find ourselves looking back upon the pages already written, remembering the people, places, joys and sorrows that have shaped our story.
With the passing of years, experiences that once seemed ordinary can take on new meaning, and we begin to recognize the quiet wisdom hidden within them. Books are wonderful keepers of such wisdom. Through them we enter lives and worlds beyond our own and listen to voices that may have spoken centuries before us. "Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith." Yet some of life's greatest books are never bound or placed upon a shelf. They are the stories written in human lives—including our own. Perhaps wisdom comes not only from reading the words of those who have gone before us, but from learning to read our own lives with greater patience, gratitude and wonder.
In The Golden Hour, the old scholar is surrounded by more books than he could possibly read, yet perhaps the most important volume is the one still being written within him. The golden light suggests to me that growing older need not be merely a fading of the day. It can be an illumination or a time to gather what life has taught us, treasure the stories entrusted to us, and recognize that even in our later chapters, there are still pages waiting to be written.
by Greg Olsen
