Repetition is not Redundancy

I've lifted this proposition from some sermon whose title has escaped me. It was said in reference to the following passage from the gospel according to St. Luke (11:5-8):

 And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves;  For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him?  And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.  I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.

     Importunity is called for in prayer, and a key element in importunity—as any toddler vying for his mother's attention knows—is repetition. But it is not as if the Lord were our mother, too busy to pay attention to us at the moment. Why do we need to be repetitive in prayer? Does God not hear the first time? 

     The Psalmist tells us that the ears of the Lord are open unto their [the righteous's] cry (34:15). So there must be something else. This proposition, that repetition and redundancy are not the same things, struck me as an answer to these questions. And once it is considered, it is obvious. When I meditate on a passage, reciting it to myself over and over again, each recitation is slightly different. I hear a different emphasis or I understand more clearly a certain ambiguity. Not only this, but each time I say that the Lord is good, it builds a muscle in my soul that grows stronger as a repeat myself. Indeed our muscles also work on this principle. Only that muscle which is exercised in frequent repetitive motion will grow and remain strong. If muscles are not engaged in regular repetitive motion, they atrophy and die. So, it seems, do our souls.