Many times I'm tempted to rationalise my situation. My blessed situation, mind you, not just any situation. It's like apologising to people for the favour God has on my life. Which, as Pastor Russell preached, is something we should not do.
Someone might point out, hey, since you study so much anyway, don't you think it's inevitable that you'd score well? The world would say that the way to excellence is hard work. High intelligence would be a bonus. Anything else is due to luck. That may be some people's life message, but not mine.
I don't buy that. So many people work their backsides off without any real significant gains. A high intelligence just means that your benchmark is set higher. You have only yourself to compare against. More is demanded out of you - that's my take.
The essential ingredient, regardless, is God. He blesses all that I set my hands to. My effort bears more fruit because of His blessing. I become more disciplined because He gives me strength. Any deficiencies in my intellect will be filled by Him. In fact, He's so much more than just an ingredient. He's actually the Master Chef.
Illustration: Imagine Lothar the swordsman, always winning swordsmanship competitions. Demonstrations, slashing shows, or duels - you name it, he has won it. He competes against the best in his class, where the warriors could wield two swords and swing them faster than an average warrior could swing one. The yearly competition attracts the attention of many fighters from distant kingdoms, and the one who wins is highly respected. Lothar, of course, trains very diligently with the blade. His master constantly pushes him to his limit, and his inner circle of friends are all excellent swordsmen themselves.Now substitute swordsman for your modern-day career, and swordsmanship for the specialised thing that you do. E.g. medicine - learning to treat/cure the human body. Or engineering - building structures for human activity. Or mathematics - solving unsolved conjectures. Or others. For me, I can't deny how much Holy Spirit is involved in my routine, daily tasks as I learn medicine. I wrote "Tuhan, tulung" in my DMF 7.3 lecture notes, where we were learning very specific mechanisms used by viruses to evade host immune systems, e.g. the Nef, Vpu and Tat protein of HIV which reduce MHC Class I expression on the membrane of infected T cells.
Someone might point out, hey, since you study so much anyway, don't you think it's inevitable that you'd score well? The world would say that the way to excellence is hard work. High intelligence would be a bonus. Anything else is due to luck. That may be some people's life message, but not mine.
I don't buy that. So many people work their backsides off without any real significant gains. A high intelligence just means that your benchmark is set higher. You have only yourself to compare against. More is demanded out of you - that's my take.
The essential ingredient, regardless, is God. He blesses all that I set my hands to. My effort bears more fruit because of His blessing. I become more disciplined because He gives me strength. Any deficiencies in my intellect will be filled by Him. In fact, He's so much more than just an ingredient. He's actually the Master Chef.
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