This article is the first part of a two-part series. The second part will take a look at when pastors abuse their congregations.
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?

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Nicodemus, like us, does not really have phantoms and dragons in his head. He has just one demon, one virus, one malady: he lives in fear.
If we get past Sunday School moralizing what do we discover in the Old Testament?
Some lie and tell us that to sin is to be ourselves. But it is not. Sin is not natural to humanity.
The little psychologist within us is often hard at work to pinpoint the origin of life’s problems.
Following him will also mean keeping our eyes locked on him so unswervingly that we don’t have the time or energy to be standing on tiptoes, peeping over fences into other people’s troubles and struggles.
God’s Law is a death sentence for us sinners. There is no winning beneath the Law of God.
The Gospel predominates when hearers receive the saving gifts of Christ as God’s final word to them.
In Martin Luther's Small Catechism he borrows a line from St. Augustine about what defines a "god."
What did Christians do, both when they encountered a Rome in its glory, as when Christ was born, and in it decline, as when Constantine tried to pull stuff back together?
There is just something about the idea of not being ‘under Law’ that sets off all kinds of alarms in the minds of many Christians.
God’s telling a joke. And after we’re done laughing at this silly divinity, we realize that the true joke is on us.
Whenever I read the Genesis account of Abraham, I’m more impressed that he’s often a clumsy, mess of a man than that it’s “faith that’s accounted to him as righteousness.”