Prayer will not be hurried, bullied, or quantified. It refuses to be pigeonholed. But when it is practiced, when our soul is given over to it, we enter into the power of God. We are taken up, as it were, into the realm of heaven where God lives and we commune with him. In a world of exile, prayer deepens us into an awareness that we have a home, a place to dwell. It opens us to the heart of God, and it leads us to say, "I am my Beloved, and my Beloved is mine." 

Distinguishing one spiritual discipline as more or less important is like saying water is more important than air (or visa versa). Each of the disciplines are mutually dependent on one another, and they should be understood as a whole and practiced in relationship to one another. But unlike so many of the disciplines, prayer reveals so much about our spiritual lives--more than we usually want to know. 

One of the things I've noticed recently is how prayer shows us just how unaccustomed and uncomfortable we are in the presence of God. It's almost like being trapped in a bad conversation at a wedding reception, where you find yourself trying to carry on a conversation with someone you don't know well, and maybe don't have much in common with, and so the nature of communication is superficial, unsatisfying, and short-lived. 

Thankfully that awkward feeling in prayer diminishes the more you pray, because the more you pray the more you become accustomed and comfortable being with God. This is why the Puritan pastors used to challenge their people to "pray till you've prayed through." Said another way, pray until you've met God; pray until you feel yourself to be a child relaxing into the arms of a loving Father, telling him your heart--and listening to His. God has given us this deep grace to slow the fast and furious rhythm of our daily lives to the pace of intimacy and love, melting the tyranny of the urgent by the one thing that is needful.