The Janitor Who Solved the Equation

In 2016, a custodian named Srinivasa at a research facility in Bangalore, India, noticed a whiteboard equation that professors had struggled with for weeks. He stayed after his shift, picked up a marker, and — drawing on self-taught mathematics he'd learned from library books — sketched out an elegant solution. The researchers arrived the next morning, stunned. They had consulted PhDs from three universities. The answer came from the man who mopped their floors.

The academic world didn't know what to do with him. He had no credentials, no publications, no letters after his name. Some dismissed the solution outright until they couldn't poke a single hole in it. Others were embarrassed that their combined expertise had been outpaced by someone they'd walked past without a second glance every day for years.

This is the way the Almighty has always worked. Paul told the Corinthians that God deliberately chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, the weak things to shame the strong, the things that are not to nullify the things that are. The cross itself was Rome's most humiliating punishment — and God made it the hinge of all history.

If you're waiting until you feel qualified enough, polished enough, credentialed enough to be used by God, you've misunderstood the entire operation. He has always done His finest work through people the world overlooks. That's not an accident. That's the strategy.