His Iphone and Ipad inventions sparked a revolution in mobile technology that have forever changed the way we communicate to one another and receive and dispense information. What is remarkable about these changes is not just the immensity of their impact, but the speed with which they occur. Subsequent inventions occur in such rapid succession it seems like technological advance is no longer measured in decades but in months and weeks. He didn't just bring about new ideas, he unleashed a connectivity that greatly accelerates new invention and so has made change a way of life.
And yet Jobs himself made the observation a few years ago that one of the most important and helpful tools he had received in his life was not something he could hold in his hand or read on a screen- but an emotional and psychological awareness of his own mortality. Here is an excerpt from his Stanford University commencement address in 2005:
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was.
The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Although Jobs religious perspective was apparently quite different from my own biblical worldview, there are some things in his observations that ring true for the believer. For instance, Paul the Apostle wrote this:
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. (2 Corinthians 5:1-3)
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18)
As Christians we believe that our knowledge and understanding of how this life will end only enhances and invigorates how we embrace life in the right now. So tonight as I pray for the family of Steve Jobs and think about what this amazing change agent has brought to my life, I am reminded that no matter how great that influence has been, it does not even begin to compare to the One whose life and death has brought about ultimate change. And although I could indeed go a lifetime without any one of his amazing inventions, I could not go a day without the hope and knowledge of the One who transforms earthly tents into heavenly dwellings. In this sense I agree with his fascinating perspective on death. It has become for me a knowledge and an awareness that is more important than all of life's inventions.
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