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Sefer Bereshis
Parashas Vayeishev
Bereishis: Chapter 37, verse 21
And Re'uven heard and
saved him from their hands and said we should not take his life.
In
the next verse we hear of Re'uven's plan of throwing
Yosef into a pit in order to return later to save him and return him to his
father. Unfortunately, the plan was not carried out as expected for when Re'uven returned to the pit, Yosef was no longer there.
Re'uven was very disappointed and unable to face
his father with the news forcing the brothers to act as if Yosef had
perished.
We
can assume that for all the years until they discovered him again, Re'uven felt that he failed to carry out his plan to
save his brother.
The
SFAS EMES says that in spite of what actually happened, Re'uven
did succeed in doing the most important thing: to save Yosef from being
killed by his brothers. Re'uven mourns for years
about his failure, but G-d wrote in the Torah the verse that tells the
absolute truth: "Re'uven heard and saved him
from their hands!" The fact is recorded in the Torah and read to
congregations year after year. Ask any child who saved Yosef and they will
answer that Re'uven
saved him.
Often
we consider our actions, call them failures and cannot get over them. We
mourn over them and refuse to try again.
Our
service to G-d should include analysis of our successes and failures. We
must fix our mistakes and try again and again. But we should not get bogged
down because at first sight our plans did not work as expected. Who knows?
If we had followed up, we might have found out that we were successful! I
am amazed at the things that I did decades ago that for some reason
eventually channel surprisingly into very beneficial occasions.
Not
only our outlook on the future should be optimistic, but also our view of
the past.
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