You Have a Calling

Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful

by: Karen Swallow Prior

• Format

  Hardcover

  ISBN

  9781587436659

  Dimensions

  5 x 7

  Pub. Date

  Aug 2025

  SRP

  $21.99

  Carton Quantity

  40

  Number of pages

  160

  Buy

About

Some people are lucky enough to get paid to do what they love. But many are not.

What if your vocation doesn't align with your passion? In You Have a Calling, award-winning author Karen Swallow Prior has encouraging news: If we pursue the good, true, and beautiful in all our work, we will find our greatest fulfillment.

In an age when passion and calling are often confused, Prior helps readers understand that passions come from within, while our calling, or vocation, comes from without and is about being called by others to serve. That crucial distinction can help us understand how God can use both our passions and our work, even if for different purposes.

This book will appeal to everyone who wants to know that their daily work, ordinary though it may be, can fulfill a higher calling to God. Readers will emerge with a renewed sense of purpose, knowing they are created for virtue in all they do because they are created in the image of God.

Contents
1. Questions
2. Work
3. Passion
4. Definitions
5. Calling
6. The Transcendentals
7. The True
8. The Good
9. The Beautiful

---

Endorsements

"Karen Swallow Prior offers wisdom, experience, and horse sense not just to students preparing for the lives ahead of them but to adults who find themselves floundering. Calling, avocation, vocation, hobby, job, career, passion--Prior dissects each of these terms and matches them to both true and false ideas. You Have a Calling deftly identifies the lies that distort our sense of what we are meant to accomplish in life and outlines a better way forward."

Susan Wise Bauer, author of History of the Ancient World and The Well-Educated Mind

"With her usual wisdom and clarity, Karen Swallow Prior dives deep into something that we all wrestle with: our place in the world and the work we've been given to do. I heartily commend this book, not only because Prior articulated many things I've felt to be true but have lacked the words for--but also because she challenged some of my assumptions and gently led me to a deeper understanding of my own calling. I closed this book with a renewed sense of purpose."

Andrew Peterson, singer, songwriter, and author

"Karen Swallow Prior has gifted us a masterful exploration of what it truly means to be called. In You Have a Calling, she expertly weaves together theology, literature, and cultural wisdom, illuminating how our life's purpose is found not merely in what we do but profoundly in who we are becoming. Prior invites readers to embrace callings that transcend occupation, anchoring life's meaning firmly in the pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Richly nuanced, deeply reflective, and eloquently written, this book challenges contemporary misconceptions of vocation and reminds us that the highest calling is to live authentically before God, wherever we find ourselves. A profoundly refreshing read that every Christian--and especially young adults navigating life's big questions--ought to pick up and savor."

Anthony B. Bradley, distinguished research fellow, The Acton Institute; research professor, Kuyper College

---