The Desert

So what is the desert?

The desert is a state of being -- a place where you find yourself alone, even in the midst of many. In this place, a place that has now begun to occupy your regular world, you encounter a disease (a dis-ease): a dryness, a barrenness, and an aloneness -- alone because no one can bloom the desert for you...

No one can help you with the question the desert poses -- and no one can help you realize the answer...

In the desert, God can sneak up on you. In the cities and towns, people are so armored, so fearful of one another -- even those they love -- that God doesn't have a chance...Or we stand waiting for God to do something different, something new.

God doesn't have anything new to show us. He's shown us everything. It's staring us in the face. That's what "We were made in God's image" means. We were shown...it in the very way we're made! (And) I've got news for you. It isn't about what you see -- it's about who is doing the seeing...The world doesn't need to be changed by God or born again; it's our way of seeing that needs to be born again, and, more specifically, the seer needs to be born again.

~ William Elliot, Falling Into The Face of God, Forty Days and Nights in the Judean Desert ~