As this election season winds down, the litany of questions before the next president are frightfully complex.  How will the peace be won in Iraq?  When will we finish the job in Afghanistan?  How will we solve global warming?  How will we address the nuclear potential of Iran or North Korea?  And on the domestic front, how can we free ourselves of dependency on foreign oil without dramatic changes in the American way of life?
There are many more questions looming on the horizon, but the biggest question  centers on whether anyone can find the answers.  The issues of our time are so complex, so dangerous to our very existence that it seems almost impossible that human ingenuity alone will succeed in charting a course through these rough waters.  How do we close the economic divide that separates the nation's richest 1% of the population from the poorest 80%?   
I am sometimes convinced that there are those who believe in heaven on earth.  That somehow, wishing will make it so.  That we can create a land without inequality, without shortages, without injustice or pain.  While I hold that we can clearly make a difference, that tomorrow can be better than today, I am also reminded by history of the intractable plight of the human soul that spawns wars of oppression, genocide, crime, greed and environmental disaster.
Whoever becomes our next president, will perhaps regret that lofty promotion, as he or she grapples with what many believe are unsolvable problems.  But this is not the occasion to forsake all hope.  While we await the answers to our problems, we, at least, can become the answer.  Each of us has the opportunity to think globally and act locally.   If enough of us work together in our respective communities, we can lower crime, improve our schools, spark economic opportunity and improve our collective futures.
Until the reign of God can dramatically alter our descent into the abyss of human depravity, we will continually face questions for which we have no answers.
And until mankind reaches the inevitable conclusion of our earthly sojourn, unanswerable questions serve to remind us of our frailty.  They maintain our sense of awe with the universe and perhaps humble us, just a little.  Living with the ambiguity of unanswerable questions, may actually be preferable to surviving questionable answers.
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