Fruitful

“I don’t feel very productive,” one of my teammates admitted the other day during a conference call. It could have been any of us talking that day, because we all have days and weeks where “productivity” is an anomaly. What does it mean to be “productive” when the work we typically do – in the way we’re used to doing it – is not an option? My team leader mentioned we might fare better focusing on fruitfulness more than on productivity.

I wrote about that distinction in a blog post before I moved overseas. At that time, I was in the middle of university classes and so much of the work I had to do was unfulfilling. It seemed to me I was being productive but not fruitful. Of course, in the long run, having a degree has provided increased fruitfulness the past several years, but that’s hard to see in the middle of an undergraduate statistics course. 

The Scripture talks a lot about fruit. John chapter 15 mentions it eight times, telling us that the only way we will bear fruit is if we stay connected to Him. Remain. Abide. Dwell. My fruitfulness is directly related to the extent to which I stay connected to Jesus.

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (15:4). 

I’m so glad that I’m not solely responsible for bearing fruit. There are days I feel very productive. Perhaps I have a certain level of focus as I do my work or get a lot of small tasks completed. It’s nice when that happens. But on the days where I don’t feel that, I have to step back and remember: What does fruitfulness look like? What is pushing me more towards bearing fruit?

I long to see Jesus’ name exalted in the Arab World. For me, that is fruitfulness. Sometimes a step towards fruitfulness looks like meeting with a language student or settling into a place of prayer or cooking a healthy meal. Whether or not those tasks line up with my imagined “productivity,” I rest in the fact that my first task is to stay connected to the Vine. I can’t bear fruit on my own.

In fact, Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (15:6). Do I really believe that apart from Him, I can do nothing fruitful? I daresay I don’t really believe this. Because if I did, I think I would spend less time worrying about being productive and more time drinking deeply of the life that comes only through abiding in the Vine.

So this week, as my Muslim friends spend their last few days of Ramadan giving extra hours to prayers and reading of their holy book, I give myself to abiding in Jesus – not because I will earn extra points, but because it’s in my time with Him that I find myself connected to the Life Source, and it’s in living from that place of abiding that I find myself less worried about checking off my list and more aware of bearing fruit for Jesus’ glory.