You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful - Hardcover

by Karen Swallow Prior (Author)

2026 Christian Book Award(R) Winner (Christian Living)

A great gift for high school and college graduates facing questions of passion, career, and calling!

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

In You Have a Calling, award-winning author Karen Swallow Prior has encouraging news: If you pursue the good, true, and beautiful in all your work, you will find your greatest fulfillment. In this book, you'll discover

● how knowing the crucial difference between passion and calling transforms how you view work;
● how to finding meaning in every role, regardless of your career; and
● how everyday work reflects the image of God through truth, goodness, and beauty.

In an age when passion and calling are often confused, Prior helps you understand that passions come from within, while your calling, or vocation, comes from without and is about being called by others to serve. That crucial distinction can help you understand how God can use both your 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. You will gain a renewed sense of purpose, knowing you are created for virtue in all you do because you are created in the image of God.

Visit the author's website for a free downloadable discussion guide.

Back Jacket

"Dives deep into something that we all wrestle with: our place in the world and the work we've been given to do"

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 you pursue the good, true, and beautiful in all your work, you will find your greatest fulfillment.

"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. 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, 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."
--Andrew Peterson, singer, songwriter, and author

"This is essential reading--especially for young adults navigating life's greatest questions."
--Anthony B. Bradley, distinguished research fellow, The Acton Institute; research professor, Kuyper College

Author Biography

Karen Swallow Prior (PhD, SUNY Buffalo) is the 2025-26 Karlson Scholar at Bethel Seminary. She is the author of You Have a Calling, The Evangelical Imagination, On Reading Well, Fierce Convictions, and Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me. She is coeditor of Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues and has contributed to numerous other books. Prior is a frequent speaker, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, a contributing writer at The Dispatch, a research fellow for Comment, and a monthly columnist at Religion News Service.