Luther said, “God himself will milk the cows through him whose vocation it is.”7 But could God himself check email through me? Could he balance the family budget and fold the laundry through me? Could he fill out bureaucratic work forms through me? Does he care about any of this? The Puritans, who talked more about work and vocation than almost any community before or since, articulated a helpful idea that Eugene Peterson later termed “vocational holiness.”8 The idea is that we are sanctified—made holy—not in the abstract but through our concrete vocation. Christian holiness is not a
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