If you’ve travelled to the Holy Land, maybe you’ve seen the desert monastery perched precariously on the edge of a steep cliff near Jericho. You may have wondered why on earth those early monks would choose such an inhospitable, practically unreachable, place to build a place of prayer.
In one direction, all you see for miles are sand and rocks, with shimmering heat waves rippling over the horizon. Wild animals lurk there. In another direction is the distant Dead Sea, where nothing lives. …