Wednesday, October 26, 2011 – Today our family received a rather strange anonymous note card in our mail box. The envelope was postmarked Providence RI. The sender had tucked a small slip of paper inside, which read: “I feel GOD has called me to make a card each day and send it to someone. I pray for names, then look them up on the computer. I hope you will read the scriptures and hear what GOD is saying to you. I hope to meet you someday in HEAVEN.”

An original ink drawing of pumpkins had been affixed to the face of the note card. The card also referred to three bible references, by book and number. I looked one of them, Revelations 3:23, and was surprised to find that it did not exist. The third chapter of the book of Revelation in my bible has 22 verses, and the title of the book is not spelled with an ‘s’ at the end.

Following my intuition, I did an online search for ‘Revelations’ and found the top listing led to an article titled The new Steve Jobs biography: 7 revelations. Posted just five days ago, on October 21, by The Week, the article shared seven revelations leaked by the press prior to the biography’s public release through booksellers, scheduled for October 24. The biography is about a college drop-out who became the famous genius creator of Apple Computer.

This was one among the recent string of articles written about Steve Jobs in the wake of his passing, at age 56 on October 5. Two weeks earlier, the headline SECULAR PROPHET had jumped out at me from a cover page of the Wall Street Journal. The headline struck me as oxymoronic. Secular means non-religious, and prophet refers to someone who proclaims the will of God… or so I thought. Below the headline, I read the words “Steve Jobs turned Eve’s apple, the symbol of fallen humankind, into a religious icon for true believers in technology. But can salvation be downloaded?”

Passing through the lobby at Migis Lodge at the time I saw the Journal article, I went to search the Migis library for a dictionary. I found a two-volume set published by Appleton Century, looked up the word “secular,” and read the first definition, which was derived from the word’s Latin root – occurring or celebrated once in an age, century or long period. Century? Appleton Century?

When multiple literal coincidences such as this occur, I wonder if some librarian angel was whispering into the subconscious mind of a journalist, perhaps some word that would catch my attention, prompt my curiosity and just happen to coincide with the most immediately available reference book. Like the word “dim” and Webster’s dictionary, this was part of the same spiritual secret code deciphering game.

Next I read the definition of secularism –a system which rejects all forms of religious faith and worship, and accepts only the facts and influences derived from the present life; also the view that public education and other matters of civil policy should be conducted without the introduction of a religious element.

After that, I read the definition of secularize – make unspiritual.

In this mysterious game of word play, as I accept the observational facts and influences at any present moment, I am able to creatively connect those to the existence of spirit, by pointing out unusual coincidences and hinting at a certain degree of preplanned destiny. Jobs most certainly belonged to and defined an age – known as the Information Age, the Digital Age or the New Media Age – characterized by the rapid shift from an industrial economy to an economy based on information technology. Can someone be both secular and spiritual? Apparently, Jobs converted to Zen Buddhism, which focuses on insight gained through meditation and pondering over stories, riddles and worldly issues. He dabbled in things both non-spiritual – like computers – and spiritual – like ideas. His life embodied both the physical and the metaphysical.

The Wall Street Journal article explains Jobs’s secularity in the following manner:

“This is the gospel of a secular age. It has the great virtue of being based only on what we can all perceive—it requires neither revelation nor dogma. And it promises nothing it cannot deliver—since all that is promised is the opportunity to live your own unique life, a hope that is manifestly realizable since it is offered by one who has so spectacularly succeeded by following his own “inner voice, heart and intuition.”

Was there more to the connection between the two articles, the anonymous note, Revelations 3:23 and Job’s biography? Was there a secret and perhaps more significant revelation yet to be discovered? Read more