Not only because the very idea of prayer—talking to a God who never talks back—is strange. But also because when we pray, we're required to recite large chunks of text, the same pages every day. Don't get us wrong: the words are beautiful and moving. But can even the most uplifting poetry continue to move us once it becomes routine?

And then there's the Shema, the central part of both the morning and evening prayer, and it, too, is curious. At their core, the words—"Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one"—are a declaration of faith. Which seems redundant: why would a person take time to pray unless he or she were already all in, already convinced that they believed in God?

To help address these questions, Rabbi David Fohrman taught us, imagine you had a magical goldfish who could talk. Amazed, you'd sit by its fishbowl and tell it about your day. But while the fish understood English and could speak it reasonably well, it had absolutely no idea what you were talking about when you told it you're watching TV, say, or grocery shopping at the supermarket—the fish had never experienced any of these things, and never will.

This, more or less, is what it feels like for a human being to talk to God. Even if the Almighty spoke back, we wouldn't understand anything about His awesome existence. And God knows this, of course, which is why He gave us a different way to reach Him: Prayer.

It's because it's all too easy to lose track of the wonder of creation, a wonder we experience every single day. Eventually, we just wake up in the morning, and drink our coffee, and read the papers, and rush to check our phones, and don't even notice that the entire world around us woke up anew to another day of infinite possibilities. And the best way to re-enchant the world is to turn amazement into routine: when we wake up every morning and read words of awe and wonder, we make gratitude a habit.

Only after we've done that can we turn to the core of each daily prayer—the Amidah, or a series of asks we make of God. Their order is inspiring. We begin by meriting our ancestors, acknowledging that all that we have we owe to the men and women who came before us and made it all possible. Then, one after another, we ask for all the bounties of life, in ascending order: Let us know things, so that we're mindful and thoughtful and not merely ravenous like the beasts; let us repent whenever we've erred; banish all the inner demons—self-doubt, say, or anxiety—that keep us from living up to our full potential; give us health, and give us earthly success; give us a community governed by good counsel and just leaders; destroy the wicked and reward the righteous; accept our prayers and bless us with Your mercy.

There's a lot more to it, of course, but like all things true and profound, prayer, too, can't be described in the abstract. It must be practiced.