The Campfire and the Flashlight
Not long ago I was on a video call with one of my staff. We'd been working through the Sermon on the Mount as a church, and he was preparing a sermon from Matthew 6:
"When you pray, go to your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father in secret. Your Father who sees what you do in secret will reward you."
We paused on that word. Reward. Not "your Father will be pleased" or "your Father will answer you." Reward. The language of value. Honestly, it felt transactional—weird coming from the mouth of Jesus about the Father and prayer.
What exactly is on offer?
Martin Laird, a theologian and contemplative, writes:
"What riches does every person have inside without needing to dig...God is the ground of our innermost being, yet we skim along the surface of life."
Here's what often happens when I sit down to pray. I try to settle in. Slow my breathing. Do my best to open myself to God. And then — almost immediately — the stream starts. The staff situation needing a decision. The sermon outline not coming together. The email I haven't answered yet. Laird has a name for this: the wild hawk of the mind — the restless, untamable stream of thought that surfaces the moment we try to be still.
Most often, what I end up doing in that moment, is searching that stream for a word from God that speaks into it. An insight. I hold up a flashlight and walk through my to-do list and call it prayer. And it is! But somewhere in my soul I know it isn't quite all there is.
A few weeks ago I was praying: taking slow breaths, doing my best to be present, sitting with Psalm 27:1: "The LORD is my light and my salvation." As I sat there with the word light, I began to notice two very different meanings or longings surface in my imagination.
The first: light as insight — God illuminating my path, making sense of the stresses on my desk. A flashlight.
The second was something else. Light as a campfire at night. A fire you stare at for hours. It brings warmth. It becomes a focal point to your vision. It dilates your pupils and the surrounding area of life and obligation begins to fade into deep blackness, as if, for a moment, it's not there at all.
The first image is about getting something useful from God. The second is about being with God in a way that makes the urgency of everything else temporarily, mercifully fade.
I wrote in my journal: Lord, if I had to pick one or the other, today my heart wants you as a campfire.
What I found later, is that God offered the Israelites both, didn’t He? In the pillar of fire. The pillar of fire was guidance, yes. But it was also presence. The people camped around it. It wasn't just a navigation signal; it was the warmth they lived beside.
The contemplative tradition has been insisting on this for centuries: the campfire mode of prayer isn't reserved for monks. It is what everything else flows from — including, eventually, the wisdom we are searching for.
It can feel indulgent to sit with God and not extract anything useful. Emails to attend to. Dishes to clean. Good things that honor God and serve others. But what if that presence — below the to-do list — is precisely the reward Jesus had in mind?
Most mornings, I still pick up the flashlight. But sometimes, briefly, I find the campfire. And even a few minutes there can change the temperature of the whole day.
What would it look like for you to sit with God as a campfire today? Not asking for insight. Just asking for warmth.
The Peace of Christ,
David
Financial Update
Each year, Duke charges about $22,000 in tuition across three semesters. Scholarships cover roughly $12,700 of that, leaving about $10,700 (with books, tools, and travel) for our family and the Financial Support Team to cover together.
In 2025, nine people gave $10,184. Thank you. I genuinely cannot do this without you.
I graduate in May 2027, with three semesters remaining. Would you be willing to give through May 2027? That takes us to the finish line.
To give, visit davidtanner.co/give or reply to this email.
Current Reads & Resources
A Spirituality of Listening by Keith R. Anderson (link)
This is one of the books I've been working through in my spiritual formation cohort this semester at Duke. Anderson's premise is simple and convicting: listening — real, attentive, patient listening — is at the heart of the spiritual life. His "reflective pause" practice is a suggested habit I find genuinely useful. If you sense your prayer life is more talking than receiving, this is a good companion.
Finding Freedom in Constraint by Jared Patrick Boyd (link)
My therapist recommended this one. Boyd makes the case that spiritual disciplines aren't restrictions on life — they're the conditions that make freedom possible. Think of a trellis: the constraint is what lets something living grow upward. I'm still working through it, but it's already one of the better books on formation I've read in a while.
Spiritual Health Reflection from Practicing the Way (link)
This is a free online assessment from Practicing the Way — a way to take stock of where you are in your journey toward Christlikeness. I've done it more than once, and there's real value in returning to it. Each time it helps me locate where I've grown, reorient to what I really long for in a non-shameful way, and identify what the next invitation might be.
"What riches does every person have inside without needing to dig...God is the ground of our innermost being, yet we skim along the surface of life."
—Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land
