Let us suppose that I am talking to a young child.
I understand what I am saying just as he presumably understands what I am saying; we understand one another on the level of certain words that are uttered.
Beyond that he cannot go. But within the range of what is spoken between us, there is something of my being, a part of me, that he grasps.
But only a part. One may even say that the child is, in most respects, cut off from the essence of me, the speaker; and, thus, much of me is left to his imagination.
If the speaker happens to be an exceptional person, a wise man, the difference is all the greater.
In that case, the speaker has had to descend even further, going to considerable lengths to make himself understood.
So too, God may be said to have made the immeasurable descent, the enormous contraction of light and energy in order to come into contact with us.
If we do perceive something, no matter how little, it becomes the great achievement of our being.
Because we recognize the incalculable and unbridgeable distance between the Divine speaker and the human listener.
However, when I say in prayer, "Oh God, cure me of my ache and trouble," it is with the irrational certainty that God had nothing better to do than to listen to my complaints, as though I were putting the fate of galaxies and my own needs on the same level.
This may help to explain why the great Tzadikim in Heaven do not pray for the community.
They can no longer relate seriously to the frivolous requests of men.
God, however, who is Infinite, makes no such distinction; He hears all men equally.
What is more, there is no before or after in God, no distinction of time or place, size or value.
This means that causality, as men know it, does not necessarily correspond to the true process and cycles of existence.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From The Long Shorter Way by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz