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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I explained to her that Jesus was quoting Psalm 22 and pointing us to the prediction of His crucifixion. She then replied, "Isn't there more to it than that?"
Have you ever found yourself looking back on a time in your life when you were thoroughly enmeshed in something wrong, and now you hardly recognize the person you were then?
As I floated in the Gulf of Mexico, I spoke these truths, but it was not the waters or the heavens that needed to hear them.
My prayer life is, first and foremost, a pitiful and distracting thing and my experience of answers delayed has often felt like Cheech's experience on the bench in this skit with Chong playing the roll of prayer answerer.
Paul is on a roll. He's adding up all the things that can separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ. And the total? Nothing, zilch, zero.
Every year, when this day rolls around, I turn over the stones of remembrance that litter my mind, to see what lurks beneath.
I was angry at heaven, at earth, and everything in between, for my life and my love and my hopes had all gone wrong, terribly, irreversibly, wrong.
A couple of weeks ago I ordered pizza for dinner. I didn’t pray, “Lord, give me pizza.” I called the store. The pizza did not drop down from heaven at my doorstep like manna from heaven.
We love because we find in the beloved something that is lovable. We see, we know, and then we love. Or, at least, we promise to love.
Today, and every day, he wears a crown and every angel in heaven knows him by name.
The details vary, of course, but we too struggle to repair the heart broken by the tragic death of someone we love. We're dazed, angry, speechless.
The reason is much simpler than that: to learn to pray, you must first die. The language of prayer is taught in the school of death.