The following entries are excerpts from Chad Bird’s new book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of the Psalms (1517 Publishing, 2025), pgs. 311 and 335
Why did the church dedicate a day to St. Michael anyway? Who is he, and what does he do?
The Antichrist offers another continual presence. It is every whisper that tempts us toward autonomy, that tells us to carry it alone, that insists suffering is meaningless.

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The Psalms aren’t the clandestine successes of a faithful soul, but are the journaled hopes of a desperate soul — of one teetering on the edge of oblivion.
Luther’s allies and opponents also would not allow him to put off responding to Erasmus indefinitely. They badgered him constantly to write a response.
Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.
Jesus did not need a single act of mercy to get him started on the road to mercy, his essence was by nature merciful.
Through the often abominable and lamentable and occasional commendable season, there is one who remains unmoved by it all.
Blessed are we, for we are filled by the cornucopia of Christ’s righteousness.
God’s love is axiomatic; it just is. It’s a truism without a logical explanation.
What Luther is doing in his Catechism is teaching how the gospel is an action of the whole Trinity, not just one of the persons.
The only one rightful heir of the kingdom of God, inherits from us, our cross, and descends into the kingdom of the damned.
Christ strikes a blow first against the presumption of those who would storm their way into heaven by their good works.
Mankind’s “thoughts and ways” on the matter of pardon and forgiveness do not even come close to exhausting, let alone fathoming, God’s “thoughts and ways.”
The reformers were compelled to confess the true faith and challenge corrupt practices—this is what the Augsburg Confession is about.