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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There is a time for justice. And there is a time for love. But love must always have the final word. Jesus must have the final word, because Jesus is God and God is Love.
The Lamb is where we are, opposite God, in our place as sinners. He bears our punishment of sin, the forsakenness of God. Anyone bearing his or her own sin is finally lost, but not Jesus.
We must also remember that our enemy is a creature of God. He is someone for whom Christ Jesus died. He is a sinner just like any other, no more or less selfish than us.
The biggest point Luther makes about the descent is not that Jesus triumphed over hell idle and unaffected, but that Jesus defeated hell by suffering hell away.
We are free to be in the world, but not of the world. We are freed to stop treating the pursuit of pleasure as an escape from pain, suffering, and death.
In his last novel, Islands in the Stream, Hemingway shows us what we get when we look to nature for ultimate truth: death.
I am told that it is preposterous and wicked to call the Son of God a cursed sinner. I answer: If you deny that He is a condemned sinner, you are forced to deny that Christ died.
Dangerous Bible stories show us a God who has no problem whatsoever using the muck and mire of our worst days to make his progress toward his good goal happen.
Far from being a Savior, the god of Unchristianity is a coach who whips us into moral shape, inspires us to be better people, serves as our example. The unspoken goal is to be so virtuous and free of sin that we don’t need Jesus anymore. The transaction is complete. Jesus is unemployed.
As we stand before our Lord dead in our transgressions and guilt, Jesus pronounces His judgment upon us. He absolves us.
As we judge and demand payment from one another, we fashion a world not only skeptical of forgiveness, grace, and mercy... but downright opposed to it.
Bonhoeffer’s simple little book makes clear how privileged many of us are to enjoy the Communion of the Saints here on earth.