Sometimes I ask myself, “Who is this G‑d I’m praying to? I can’t see Him. I can’t understand Him. How can I have any relationship with Him?”

And I answer myself with a childhood memory.

As a child, I wanted a bicycle. For months. Real bad. I finally got one for my birthday, which happens to be in October. But in October in Vancouver, where I grew up, it could rain for weeks without stop.

So I asked G‑d to please make it sunny tomorrow, so that I could ride my new bike. Which He did. For which I was very grateful. Because in Vancouver, that’s a miracle.

And if you would have asked me then, “Who is this G‑d? What makes Him G‑d? How do you know He exists?”—none of those questions would have had any meaning to me. All I knew was that He was listening whenever I talked to Him, wherever I talked to him, as long as I really meant what I said. And that if I needed a sunny day, G‑d was the address.

That is all I can tell you about the G‑d to whom I prayed as a child. And that is the G‑d to whom I pray now as an adult.

As Rabbi Shimshon of Chinon put it—so often quoted by the Rebbe, “When I pray, I pray with the mind of a small child.”

Yes, then I was a child. I knew no better. Now I have a mind of my own. Now I’ve read books and written books, studied from teachers and argued with them, sat and contemplated and contemplated again, and then contemplated my contemplations.

And yes, that’s the hardest part of becoming an adult—growing and learning while never leaving the child behind. Because all the philosophy and theology and Kabbalah and contemplations of all the greatest Jewish thinkers is only to achieve some sort of grasp of one thing: Who is this G‑d to whom we prayed as a child?

But we cannot. As soon as we have grasped, He is gone.

And so, when we talk to Him, we put aside all our philosophy and reasoning, all our contemplations and realizations, and we pray with the mind of a small child.