What's Important?

I'm plowing through the Gospels at the moment, feeling sometimes like I'm reading the same passage over and over- ha, because I am! But when God repeats things multiple times, like he does with the synoptic Gospels, it means we're supposed to pay special attention- sorta like you saying very, very.

So I've been thinking about Jesus going off alone to pray and how He constantly asked people He healed to not tell anyone- a true lesson in humility and priorities. Speaking of priorities, I read a few paragraphs just now so rich in importance that it's too good not to simply quote directly:

"Prayer is a kind of priority that lies at the root of all the others -- at the root of life itself. It's a lot like eating; if we rarely eat, our physical health will suffer. We'll be weak and sick. It will affect our ability to carry on the activities of life. In a similar way, if we rarely pray, our spiritual life will lack vitality. We'll approach the challenges and successes of life on our own, as though we're not totally dependent on God even for life itself.

"Without prayer, we begin to take credit for the good things in our lives, chalking them up to our skill, knowledge, wisdom and hard work. We begin to forget that all our skill, knowledge, wisdom and hard work are gifts from God -- He gave us the mind, body and circumstances of life that enabled us to have and develop those attitudes.

"On the other hand, without prayer, we fall into fear, anxious worry and even despair at the failures, frustrations and bad events in our lives. We become unsure of God's love for us, unsure that He stands with us in our problems. We feel alone and afraid, doubtful about our ability to cope with what life is heaping onto us.

"Prayer is the grease, we might say, that keeps the gears and wheels of life in good working order. Without prayer, we see ourselves as alone against the world, left to fend off the storms of life on our own wits and brawn. It is in the course of prayer that we learn to see the true state of things -- that we are creatures within a creation, creatures dependent on our Maker and on all the other parts of the creation, and as such, never alone."
-Excerpted from Grace Communion International -- gci.org/bible/mark1j