Who or what is our reason for being? Why do we do the things we do? What does it all mean?

These questions, Center for Faithful Business Fellow Steve Garber suggests, are the most interesting questions. In The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love & Learning, Worship & Work (InterVarsity Press, 2020, 126 pages), Garber explores these questions in brief, vivid vignettes—around meals, in corporate headquarters, museums, and more. “Visions of vocation,” Garber notes, “have to become flesh. They have to be worked out and lived into among friends, in neighborhoods, in small towns and big cities” (15).

In his consulting work with Mars Corporation, Garber invites the reader into conversations exploring the possibilities of economics of mutuality—where an honest effort is made to holistically account for profit, people, and planet—resulting in rethinking the very nature of business. In conversations with young, global entrepreneurs in the Catskills of New York with Praxis Labs, Garber shares about persistent partnerships that bridge the work of Whole Foods and women from the Maai Mahiu village in Kenya. In lectures at L’Abri in Switzerland and tours of the Grohmann Museum in Milwaukee, Garber offers a vision of work that matters—no more, no less than it ought.

Garber has long been driven by a vision of an integrated vocation, one that is committed to the common good, what he describes as “the seamless life.” He invites readers to discover this vision’s origins in his own life (the ora et labora, prayer and work, of his grandfather’s life) and how it continues to thread its way through conversations, personal and public, in ways that are sure to spark inspiration for deeper integration and greater purpose in the reader’s own life.

Work, properly understood, is integral to the meaning of life, Garber insists—not incidental. Such a vision of life and work requires having eyes to see in integrated ways. It requires models. In The Seamless Life, Garber offers both.

Thanks to Byron Burger at Hearts & Minds Bookstore for sharing Garber’s work in their 40th anniversary reflection. Released in hardback in 2020, The Seamless Life will be available in paperback early next year.