Recently, a lot has been said and written about the life of Steve Jobs. In fact, you may be getting a little weary. Without question, he made an incredible contribution to society. Personally, I have had an IPod for several years, and my wife has an IPad2. In the office, we all use IPhones, and two staff members have Mac computers. Steve Jobs’ influence surrounds us.

At the same time, some commentary has a tendency to make him bigger than life, and some of the things I have read and heard border on deifying him. I don’t ever remember hearing his faith story or seeing how he used his wealth and influence to help marginalized people. Of course, those are private matters between him and his Creator, and I hope he was a person of faith who believed in helping others.

I read one article that included a portion of his personal address to the Stanford University graduating class of 2005. I don’t remember hearing the address then, but I may not have been listening as closely to that sort of thing as in the last couple of weeks. This is the quote that caused me to stop for reflection:

“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.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Frankly, that is a rather profound theological statement. I trust it was not a mistake that in fact he was addressing how we all live life between our personal aspirations and the reality that we are finite creatures. We do, in fact, have a very limited time upon this earth whether it be 1 day or 100 years. God has challenged us to live life to the fullest so that we might not only enjoy the moment, but fulfill God’s unique purpose and mission for our lives.

May we all have the courage to follow our hearts and intuition (perhaps we can call it our “passion”), as we strive to be the person that God has created us to be during this short journey on earth.