I cannot work or contribute the way I used to, and it feels like my value has dropped. Is a person worth anything when they are not producing?

“Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”

This psalm was written for worshippers arriving at the temple gates, an ordinary crowd drawn from every station in life. The line at its centre corrects the most natural human mistake, which is assuming we make ourselves. Being made and being tended come before anything a worshipper brings through the gate. Nothing in the psalm asks what they produced that year, and they arrive as sheep, already belonging to someone.

“For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's.”

Paul is settling a dispute between Christians dividing over food and holy days, and he lifts the argument to a far higher level than the quarrel deserved. Belonging to Christ, he says, covers living and dying alike, both ends of a life and everything between. Whatever season you are in, including the one where you cannot contribute what you once did, that ownership does not change.