We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.

But in the desert, in the pure clean atmosphere, in the silence ? there you can find yourself. And unless you begin to know yourself, how can you even begin to search for God?

"They found grace out in the desert

"God takes everyone he loves through a desert. It is his cure for our wandering hearts, restlessly searching for a new Eden...

Oh,' the priest said, 'that's another thing altogether - God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.

O world, world when I was younger I thought there was some order governing you and your deeds. But now you seem to be a labyrinth of errors, a frightful desert, a den of wild beasts, a game in which men move in circles?a stony field, a meadow full of serpents, a flowering but barren orchard, a spring of cares, a river of tears, a sea of suffering, a vain hope.

He was thinking that the cities, perhaps, needed to look into the future even more than the country did. They should look ahead for forty, eighty, one hundred and sixty years, to a strong and healthy plain of population - or to an overworked, weakened, underfed, and infertile desert.

The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements. According to your mythology, this is what he was BORN to do.

When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.

He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.

The house, the stars, the desert -- what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!

What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...

Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther).

It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it's easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it's in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one's dreams would have no meaning.

Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak arid desert.

In Israel a land lacking in natural resources we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars conquer the deserts eradicate disease tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce.

I think the American West really attracts me because it's romantic. The desert the empty space the drama.

For some years I deserted religion in favour of Marxism. The republic of goodness seemed more attainable than the Kingdom of God.

I would love to hear all types of Christian artists played all over the world. I'd love to hear good positive mainstream music played all over the place. I'd love to be able to bring music together. But I have not deserted Christ. I have not deserted my faith.

I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you come and sit relax and enjoy yourself for a while.

The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert where man is never lonely for he feels life stirring on all sides.

It was so quiet that morning in Paris that the heels of my two companions and myself were loud on the deserted pavements. It was a city of shuttered shops and barred windows and deserted avenues.

Let us be honest with each other. The threat to marriage is not the gays. It is a lack of loving commitment - whether it is found in the form of neglect indifference cruelty or adultery to name just a few manifestations of the loveless desert in which too many marriages come to grief.