God punishes us mildly by ignoring our prayers and severely by answering them. – Richard J. Needham

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention — on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God — that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. – W. H. Auden

Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks. I Thessalonians – Bible