Pray for Steve Jobs

Tens if not hundreds of millions of people across the World grimaced when they heard the news. Steve Jobs is taking another medical leave of absence. Some thought of their iPhone or iPad or iObsessions with everything he says and does. Others thought of their iPortfolios and the impact this news would have on the stock market and the long term success of the company. Still others immediately felt a sense of personal loss, not so much at the thought of losing the future of Apple but of losing one of the inspirational luminaries of our time. A lot of us would watch his famous Keynote addresses even if he were selling used cars. Something about his presence and presentational essence and his ordinary yet extraordinary way of unfolding the Apple story captures us. Perhaps it’s the overwhelming underdog nature of his story. He began a revolution in his garage with a few friends only to later be fired from the company. He got cancer at a young age and overcame it. He made an unlikely return from silicon valley exile and literally put Cupertino on the map. His way of thinking and innovating made the first decade of the 21st century truly extraordinary. And the future looks bright.

But then there’s his health. Shrouded in mystery, his medical condition haunts us all. Though a decisively uncommon man, we find the common bond of our race in moments like these: Finitude. No amount of money can defeat death. No human ingenuity can defeat death. No advances in medical science can ever hope to defeat death. No amount of technological progress can defeat death.

But there is another person, an infinitely brilliant Creative type, a man smarter than the smartest doctors, an investor more wealthy than all wealth combined,  a mystic who with a single word can stupefy the most amazing technological advance imaginable, a scientist whose capacious gifts confounds science. In all the history of the World, he is the only one who can defeat death. He actually did it and said he would do it for those who place their faith in him.

“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” John 11:25-26

He followed it with a simple, piercing question. “Do you believe this?”

I am praying for Steve Jobs to believe this. Will you join me? Follow @pray4stevejobs