Why, a song asked some years ago, pray?  Why pray to a God who already knows what will happen?  Won't everything happen the way he has planned, anyway?
     These questions do not have easy answers, if they even have answers at all.  But maybe they are missing the point.  When the psalmist says (Psalm 116), "I believed, therefore I spoke," he is not so much urging God to do something as he is affirming that despite any questions he may have about how God may be working in his situation, he still chooses to believe in him.  He still wants to be in relationship with him.  He still sees God as, in a way he cannot see at the moment, the ultimate and final answer.  He still understands that God is the only credible explanation for existence.
     Does this solve the writer's problem?  Materially, perhaps not.  Metaphysically, however, it more than does:  nothingness has never solved (or resolved) anything.