Steve Jobs 1955-2011

So here I am, past midnight, sitting here with the TV on -- not exactly watching it; really, it's watching me --  and I'm seeing that CNN has non-stop coverage of the death of Apple founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, and this has been for a few hours now. It's almost the kind of coverage you might expect when a head of state dies, not a former corporate CEO.  I notice that even sports website ESPN.com currently has a link to the story, which by itself it interesting since non sports-related stories are rarely on their site. The last time I remember ESPN having a non-sports story on it's front page was back when Osama bin Laden was killed, so clearly they this is considered a major national, even global, news story. 

Apart from Bible personages (Jesus, Daniel, John the Baptist, Paul) and certain preachers I admire greatly,  there are few secular personalities I look at as being particularly inspirational to me (Churchill, Kennedy,and ML King being a few). Steve Jobs is up there in my mind as one I admired from a distance --- not quite in that Churchill/King category, but perhaps on that next level below. An innovator, and an inspiration to many, this is a man that definitely made an impact on his world. As I sit here with my iPhone beside me, and my wife's MacBook and iPad across the room, it strikes me just how much one person's vision can affect so many lives around them, and even around the globe.  So I just  thought I'd post a few words in tribute and appreciation for the life, vision  and contributions of Steve Jobs -- one of many thousands, of course, that will probably pop up on the 'net in the next 24 hours or so.

And at the  same time, that somewhat uncomfortable question crosses my mind, the same one that enters my mind almost every time a celebrity  dies: where is his soul right now? From what I've read, Steve Jobs was a Buddhist, and since I know that salvation is not found in Buddhism, but in Jesus Christ only,  it makes Job's death even more sad to me. As the scripture says "what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Still, I find a lot of inspiration in many aspects of the Steve Job's story, particularly the way the came back to Apple (after being fired by the very company he founded) and brought the company from the brink of death  to turn it into a technological behemoth. Resilience. Vision . Drive. All that good stuff.

It's great, I suppose, that we'll hear a lot in the next few days about the impact Jobs had in terms of innovation, technology, productivity, etc,  Too bad we almost certainly won't hear anyone speak about his impact in terms of his contributions to the Kingdom of God, since those contributions seem to be non-existent. What have we done for the cause of the Kingdom of God, ans what's our relationship with God like? In the end, that's really all that will matter on the day we breathe our last breath.Nothing is more important; not even close. It's good to remind ourselves of that every now and then.