Have you ever faced a problem that seemed like it had no answer? An impossible situation? Something insurmountable? Are you facing something like this right now?
Esther Klein was born in Budapest in 1910. She loved physics. She loved geometry. She loved math so much that she started a math club with some of her friends, other Hungarian students, with whom she met every Sunday afternoon in one of the city’s beautiful parks. At one of these meetings, Esther challenged the club to solve a curious geometry problem she’d come up with but couldn’t figure out. Imagine, Esther proposed to them, five dots on a piece of paper with no three of them in a straight line such that whenever four of the points are joined, they form a quadrilateral. She then asked her colleagues to identify the smallest number of points in which every possible arrangement of points on the page would always contain at least one set that are the vertices of a convex polygon.
Do you follow? No? Well, me neither, but fortunately, understanding the mathematics of this conundrum is not the point of the story. The point is rather that one of the young men in the math club, George Szekeres, inspired and challenged by Esther’s question, began to work on it with her, and after hours, weeks, then months of laboring over the puzzle, they determined Esther had come up with something very rare—a question, a geometry problem, a mathematical puzzle that’s impossible to solve.
But here’s the more important thing. Esther and George began to work together searching for the answer, and as they continued to do so over a long period of time, years in fact, a number of things occurred. First, they further developed their skills in the field of complex mathematics. Second, as they wrestled with Esther’s curious problem, they came up with a number of other mathematical proofs of great practical use in their field. And third, and most significantly of all, the way they grappled together with the puzzle with intensity, they began to slowly realize that more than anything else, they simply loved working with one another. They enjoyed being in one another’s company. Despite never finding an answer to the problem, they bonded in the midst of the difficult work. In fact, Esther and George fell so deeply and durably in love that, in the world of mathematics, Esther’s impossible question without a definitive answer, is now known as the Happily-Ever-After Problem.
Klein and Szekeres were married, had two children (who were no doubt very smart), many grandchildren, and lived happily in Australia with each other well into their 90s when they passed away within an hour of one another. They experienced joy, meaning, and most significantly, developed a deep devotion and love for one another over the course of their work together on the impossible problem.
Of course, none of us want to find ourselves in the midst of situations with no answer, and sometimes it feels like when we take up our most intractable problems with God, we have only a silent partner, but our faith teaches us that when we do, our devotion is somehow rewarded. Maybe an imaginative, creative, and sacred solution may emerge. But maybe it won’t. Even if it doesn’t, though, the bond that’s forged with God in the midst of the struggle, in both mystical and practical ways, will prove redemptive in some way. That is to say, when we seriously grapple with our impossible problems with God with real intensity, there is no wasted time. It is not wasted effort. Your devotion may bring benefits to other parts of your life, but it will most assuredly bestow upon you the blessing of a closer and more authentic relationship with your Creator.
Perhaps the main takeaway from the story of Esther Klein and George Szekeres, when considered in the context of our faith, is that while a loving God must surely be interested in our vexing predicaments, our thorny problems, and the ongoing difficulties we face in trying to figure things out in this world, God may be more interested in simply being in relationship, in communion, and connected to us as the struggles take place. The hard questions of our lives and their elusive answers are probably not nearly as important as being involved, engaged, and deeply tethered to God as we wrestle with them. This, in the end, is the path that most likely leads to that happily-ever-after place we all hope to find.
God—Help me to understand that finding answers to my most intractable problems isn’t as important as being in Your company while I seek them. Amen.
