Is it possible to know the world and still love the world?
Of all the questions we ask about our calling, this is the most difficult. From marriages to international relations, the more we know, the harder it is to love. We become cynics or stoics, protecting our hearts from the implications of what we know. But what if the vision of vocation can be recovered―allowing us to step into the wounds of the world and for love's sake take up our responsibility for the way the world turns out?
For decades Steve Garber has come alongside a wide range of people as they seek to make sense of the world and their lives. With him we meet leaders from the Tiananmen Square protest who want a good reason to still care about China. We also meet with many ordinary people in ordinary places who long for their lives to matter:
- Jonathan who learned he would rather build houses than study history
- Todd and Maria who adopted creative schedules so they could parent better and practice medicine
- D.J. who helped Congress move into the Internet Age
- Robin who spends her life on behalf of urban justice
- Hans who makes hamburgers the way they are meant to be made
- Susan who built a home business of hand-printing stationary using a letterpress
- Santiago who works with majority-world nations in need of capital
- George who has given years to teaching students to learn things that matter most
- Claudius and Deirdre whose openhearted home has always been a place for people
- Dan who loves Wyoming, the place, its people and its cows
Vocation is when we come to know the world in all its joy and pain and still love it. Vocation is following our calling to seek the welfare of the world we live in. And in helping the world to flourish, strangely, mysteriously, we find that we flourish too. Garber offers a book for everyone everywhere―for students, for parents, for those in the arts, in the academy, in public service, in the trades and in commerce―for all who want to discover the virtue of vocation.
We all want to make sense of life, of who we are and why we are, and to know that what we do day in and day out means something. We want it to matter. But the daily demands-work, eat, sleep, repeat-often lead to a life that feels void of meaning and disjointed from our deepest beliefs about faith, hope, and love.
But what if we began to see all we are and all we do-our work, our play, our relationships, our worship, our loves-as significant to God and to what God is doing in the world?
In these essays Steven Garber challenges us to move beyond our fragmented sense of reality, and to view life differently. Once we discover that there is no chasm between heaven and earth, and begin to see the truest truths of the universe woven into the very meaning of life and labor, of learning and liturgy, we are able to understand the coherence between the work of God and our lives in the world.
This is the seamless life-to recognize the hand of God and the handiwork of God right in the middle of our ordinary lives. To see all of life as sacred.
Vocation is following our calling to seek the welfare of the world we live in. And in helping the world to flourish, strangely, mysteriously, we find that we flourish too. Filled with stories of global leaders and ordinary people, Steven Garber's book is for everyone who wants to discover the virtue of vocation.
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