Career, Vocation, Etymology, and J.I. Packer

Consider career and vocation, based on the etymology of the words:

Career comes to English from 15th century French, carere, which was a circular racetrack. We get the English word "careen" from the same root word. You can go very fast in a career, there may be cheering fans, and it can be exhilirating, but you don't necessarily go very far.

In contrast, the English word vocation comes from the Latin vocare, which means voice or calling. Pursue your calling.

Remember that corporations are legal entities without a soul. They can only offer environments for careers, they cannot create a calling. A lot of corporations today are desperately trying to inject soul (they might call it "desirable corporate culture") into their corpus.

Short videos worth your time: J.I. Packer speaks briefly on work as ministry, and about vocation.