RIP Steve Jobs

I know this is a week late and after most of the world has moved on.  But I have been holding on to my thoughts on Steve Jobs' passing into eternity.

I type this from my MacBook Pro.  My wife's beside me editing pictures on her MacBook Pro.  Earlier she answered a call on her iPhone.  I listened to some music today that I downloaded from iTunes on my old-school iPod.  Four of the six staff members at church have Macs.  Two have iPhones.  One has an iPad.

One particular pastor wishes he had one...but I digress.

His genius in both form and function is unsurpassed in our generation.  Some have compared him to Edison.  He might be more like Eli Whitney, since he revolutionized not only an industry but radically impacted the culture in which that industry functions.  Theologians call that "common grace," the kind of grace from God that comes when it rains, when someone's smart enough how to transmit electricity to my house, when the sun shines on blue sky days.  Through Jobs' brain, we have experienced God's common grace.

His personal life was one of triumph in the midst of trial.  NeXT.  Pixar.  Apple Computer.  Apple, Inc.  Cancer.  Liver transplant.  Battles in board rooms.  But he also missed his kids along the way, claiming one of the reasons he wanted a biography written was so his kids would know him.  Wow.

And his spiritual life seemed to be all over the place, primarily the Gospel of Me.  Call it Buddhism or something eastern or whatever, it wasn't about exalting Jesus and giving Him praise for the creativity and genius and breath.

The world will never be the same because of him.

But it's a reminder that Paul counted everything loss in order to gain Christ.  What he had he found to be trash in light of the surpassing worth of Christ.  If we get to the end of our lives and we can say we knew Christ and knew Him well, we succeeded.  If not, we failed.

But that's just me thinking thoughts...