The announcement of Steve Jobs’ death dominated the network and cable news coverage. Many of the news stories and interviews about his life described the 56-year-old as a visionary for transforming the way we use technology.

Steve Jobs has been compared to Thomas Edison and Henry Ford because of the impact of his inventions on our daily lives. Jobs has been called one of the fathers of the personal computing era. A co-founder of Apple computers in 1976, he once said, “We started out to get a computer in the hands of everyday people, and we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

Jobs is known as the creator of the iPhone, iPad and iPod. He changed the movie industry when he purchased the computer division of Lucasfilm, Ltd., in 1986 and incorporated it as an independent company called Pixar. Pixar produced the first computer-animated full-length movie, “Toy Story,” winner of numerous Academy Awards.

Reading the news stories about the life and death of Steve Jobs, I learned that he was born on Feb. 24, 1955 in San Francisco to unwed parents. Jobs was adopted by a couple in Northern California in an area later known as Silicon Valley.

During a Commencement Address at Stanford University in June 2005, Jobs said his birth mother was a young, college graduate student who, though she gave him life, chose to place him up for adoption. He went on to say that she wanted him to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Turns out that couple wanted a girl, so the next parents on the adoption waiting list were called in the middle of the night.

According to published reports, Paul Jobs was a machinist for a company that manufactured lasers and Clara Jobs was an accountant. They named their son Steven Paul.

Jobs recalled that his biological mother found out a few months later that his adoptive mother had not graduated from college and his adoptive father had not completed high school. He said she would not sign the final adoption papers until his adoptive parents promised to send him to college someday.

Steve Jobs went to Reed College, but dropped out after six months. He went on to say that he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life, and he didn’t want to waste the life savings of his working-class parents.

Speaking to the Stanford grads, he recalled, “When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”’

Jobs reportedly had been diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in October 2003, followed by surgery in July 2004. Then, in June 2009, he had a liver transplant, “I now have the liver of a mid-20s person who died in a car crash and was generous enough to donate their organs, and I wouldn’t be here without such generosity.” Steve Jobs spoke in favor of legislation in California that would help people be more aware of the opportunity to be organ donors, in the hopes that “all of us can be as generous and elect to become organ donors.”

In his birth and during his battle with cancer, Jobs’ was an example of the value of every life. As one ancient writer put it, “For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb…I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13).

Steve Jobs’ life reflected “the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God,” stated in the “Manhattan Declaration – a Call to Christian Conscience” that defends the biblical view of the sanctity of life.

When Apple announced on Oct. 5, 2011, that Steve Jobs had died, I was reminded that God has a purpose for each of our lives, and that choosing life impacts generations to come.