Tuesday, May 12, 2026 | Not So Ordinary, Week 2

Devotional Thought

Our lives are in his hands, and he keeps our feet from stumbling.
Psalm 66:9, NLT

The psalmist has been through something. That’s clear by verse 10: You tested us, God. You refined us like silver. You let people ride over our heads. You let us walk through fire and flood.

And then: you brought us to a place of abundance.

This is not a psalm written in a good week. It’s written by someone on the other side of a bad stretch, looking back, naming what they can see now that they couldn’t see then: God kept us alive through it. Not comfortable. Not untested. Alive.

There’s a kind of faith that’s only ever known smooth ground. It talks about God like he’s a problem-prevention system. But that’s not what the psalmist is describing. He’s describing something harder and more real — a God who allowed the pressure, whose hands were underneath the whole time.

He kept our feet from slipping. Not: he removed the slippery ground. He kept our feet.

That matters in a hard season. When you’re in the middle of it, you can’t always feel the hands. The fire feels like fire. The flood feels like flood. But the psalmist says from the other side: he was holding. The whole time, he was holding.

If you’re still in the middle and not on the other side yet: someone else wrote this psalm first. That’s not nothing.

Going Deeper

Scripture Reading

Psalm 66:8-20, NLT

Historical Context

Psalm 66 is a communal psalm of thanksgiving, possibly written after a national deliverance — some scholars connect it to Hezekiah’s era and the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem (2 Kings 18-19), though it’s not certain. The first half (vv.1-7) is a corporate call to praise for God’s past acts. The second half shifts to individual testimony (v.16: Come and listen, all you who fear God). The personal section suggests a single voice within the community standing up to say: here’s what he did for me.

Literary Context

The psalm moves from plural to singular — from we and our to I and my. Community praise leads to personal witness. Verse 12’s extremes — fire and flood — are likely metaphorical for severe hardship, not literal events. The psalm ends with answered prayer: I cried out, he listened, he didn’t withhold his love.

Theological Context

The testing imagery in v.10 (refining silver) picks up Proverbs 17:3 and Isaiah 48:10. The biblical tradition doesn’t treat hardship as evidence of God’s absence — it treats it as the context in which fidelity is formed. Hope grounded in a God who holds through hard seasons is more durable than hope grounded in circumstances being good.

Key Insights

1. The psalmist praises through the memory of difficulty, not around it. Honest praise includes the hard parts.
2. He kept our feet from slipping — the keeping was the miracle, not the removal of the difficult ground.
3. The shift from we to I in verse 16 matters. Community faith has to become personal testimony at some point.
4. Answered prayer in vv.19-20 is specific: he listened, he attended, he didn’t withhold love.

Looking in the Mirror

1. Can you look back at a hard season and name one specific way God kept you from slipping — even if you couldn’t see it while you were in it?
2. Is there a current difficulty you’re willing to name as refinement rather than abandonment?
3. Who in your life needs to hear your specific story of being kept?

Guided Prayer

God, I want to be honest that I don’t always feel the holding. The fire feels like fire. The flood feels like flood. But this psalmist looked back and saw your hands the whole time. Give me that kind of vision — enough to trust what I can’t see from where I’m standing. And when I’m on the other side, give me the courage to say what you did — specifically, not vaguely — so someone else still in the middle can hear it. Amen.