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 am often haunted by my past. I am daily haunted by what I should be doing.
Jesus’ forgiveness will not collapse. Jesus’ forgiveness will take us places our legs can’t take us.
For all its stewing, regret ironically does not truly focus on the past. Often it is more concerned with the present and the future and how they would be if only we had done something differently.
Love is the sum of the law. Love God with all your heart, spirit, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. That means that if love can't be done when it needs to be done then get rid of the law, because it's not lawful.
I visited a senior man at his home the other day. I'll refer to him as “Jim.”
The Christian sees himself or herself as one just as guilty as the rest of the world. But we see ourselves not just as what’s wrong with the world, but in the One by whom the world has been redeemed.
Would you go to the church on the corner knowing that the pastor is an ex-con?
We try believing in more abstract concepts: justice, happiness, and self-improvement, only to find that we can never truly grasp which standards should be accepted and which should be rejected.
Jesus cuts right to the chase when it comes to the evil one. He calls the devil “a liar and the father of lies,”
When we Christians shoehorn Creedal Christianity into any of these ideological positions we obscure the Gospel mingling it with the Law and strip the Good News of its catholicity.
As every nail that Jesus hammered was a delight to his Father, so every email you send, every purchase you ring up, every table you wipe down, is a delight to the Father.
She was my friend, walking through marriage troubles. Her husband was unfaithful to her, with the technicalities and carefully drawn lines of “not technically sex” and justifying himself, which had wounded her deeply.