And he was remembered.

And then, he was forgotten, slowly, gradually, not completely, but enough so that honor and glory and strength of influence evaporated.

Generations had passed and the person of influence simply did not know Joseph. All he saw were people he perceived as a threat.

He lashed out with irrational and indiscriminate violence to commit an act of mass genocide. It was horrific and yet, it was the story of emergence. A new leader would emerge from the bulrushes who, 80 years later would stand before a king and lead a people to freedom.

And he would be reminded of the story of Joseph and he and those who later reflected upon his life and legacy would somehow, connect the two stories to make one continuous story.

That was the story of resurgent and emergent leadership in a world where leaders come and go and crises grow and recede.

Our stories may seem isolated, disconnected, intermittent, and separated by decades and more of discontinuity, but they are actually part of one story.

We are known, remembered, and forgotten. Then, years, decades, and sometimes centuries pass and some sliver of memory is passed to the next wave of God-work in human frailty and greatness. A new story grows out of the old story and something lost in memory comes again into memory and some tiny tentacle grows to connect the new to the old.

And it is one story from Joseph to Moses and to and through so many stories to our own generation, having passed through the cross and resurrection, the story continues and we cannot know how many more chapters shall be written before there is some grand tension that shall bring us to that last page that grips us with anticipation and then, The End and then, we turn to page for …

an Epilogue …

for the "logue" is "logos" and the Word goes on and on and on …

… and on …

This is our time. What shall we do? How shall our story join the great ongoing story?