Find the Undo Button

“Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt. And Reuben returned unto the pit; and, behold, Joseph was not in the pit; and he rent his clothes. And he returned unto his brethren, and said, The child is not; and I, whither shall I go?” (Ge 37:28-30 AV)

My question is: why didn’t Reuban, or anyone else for that matter, repent and go after Joseph?  Why didn’t they try to buy him back?  Even if it was a few days later, why not try to redeem their brother and admit to their mistake?  That Midianite caravan couldn’t have gotten that far away.  Surely a couple of the siblings could have pursued and tried to purchase their brother’s freedom.  The point is, there is never a point of no return where something cannot be fixed.  There is always opportunity to undo a wrong.  Things may not return to exactly the way they were before, but that is no reason to let it go and get worse.

I work with graphics on my computer.  My favorite button is the “undo” button.  Or, the “back one step” button.  These features are great!  If I am working with a photograph I can adjust one feature at a time and undo it if I don’t like it, keeping the previous adjustments in place.  Sometimes, while preparing a sermon outline, the ‘undo’ button works great as well.  When pasting formatted text into my outline, I am really particular that it looks just like the typed text.  Sometimes, I have to undo a paste and redo with the correct formatting.  The undo button is awesome.  Working in Photoshop, one can undo on style while keeping others.  One can even go back to the original image negating all the changed which were made.  However, when the user clicks ‘save’, the undo feature goes away until more modifications are made.  Once ‘saved’ is clicked, you are stuck with the changes.

There is rarely a ‘save’ button in life.  Errors can be reversed.  One can ‘undo’ a choice even though the code is still hidden in the background.  Yes, there may be residual effects left behind.  And it may not return exactly as it once was.  I have some scars to prove it.  But we are not necessarily stuck with it as it is. Doing wrong is bad enough.  But avoid undoing the wrong is worse.  The eleven brothers could have taken a tongue lashing and returned Joseph.  Instead, they were in for major humiliation and fear.  Better to fix something early then reap additional problems because we ignored the consequences of our choices.