Steve Jobs

It's been a little over a year since Steve Jobs passed away. He was young, by the standards we set in this society, but he had always felt that he would not live a "long" life.

I've been plodding through Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs for several months. I say plodding due to the fact that it's taking me a long time to read it, not because it's boring...not by a long shot. It seems as though I will spend two or three days reading voraciously and then set the book aside for a week or two. Indeed, Steve Jobs was a very intense person...maybe setting the book aside helps keep me from getting caught up in his well documented "reality distortion field." It's an interesting read, at least for me; I'm a little bit into technology and a lot into Apple's products.

The man was  a genius. The man was a visionary. The man was really weird...but...weird sort of fits. Think about people like Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, and Howard Hughes just to name a few. They were all brilliant and at least a little weird. In fact, some of the greatest geniuses of history went "crazy," if they lived long enough.

By no means was Steve Jobs an exemplar of the finest qualities of leadership. He was often a brutal leader, unable to relate to his employees in a humane manner...but the people who worked with/for him typically speak of the experience as one they don't regret. As cruel and abrupt as he could be, he also brought out the best in people. He was able to get people to do the things they had previously thought impossible simply by getting them to believe they could do it. He was able to convince people to accomplish in hours or days what they had tried to convince him would take weeks or months.

As I read about this charismatic genius, a master of spin, a man who was able to turn sand and circuits into a multi-billion dollar empire, I can't help but wonder what the world would be like if all that energy had been focused on changing it in a different way? What if Steve Jobs had cared about people's hearts as much as he did about providing them with great technology experiences? It's a wonder I'll just have to let wander in my mind.

I'm no Steve Jobs...not by a long shot...but I wonder if I can't learn from him in a way that will impact my faith in a positive way. Steve was all about putting something in people's hands that would leave them wanting more. It needed to be easy, simple to use, something they should feel good about, something that they recognized as being good to have in their lives. Shouldn't that be how my faith looks to the world? Shouldn't people want to pick it up and look at? Find out what it's all about? Take it home with them and incorporate it into their life? Should it be easy and intuitive or should it come with 1,000 pages of complex instructions?

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

Abba, I come to you in my brokenness. I ask that you make me a light in a dark world. Make me humble. Make me gentle. That they world would see your Son in me and You in Him.