Thick, delicious irony

[Tonus]

When Christians say "Trust in God" they do not mean "Trust God to look after your stuff, so it doesnt get nicked", but rather "trust that everything is happening for a reason / has some meaning".

This brings to mind a conflict, and perhaps it's only from Jehovah's Witnesses, though it does not seem to be the case (I know non-JWs who do this as well). They pray for god's guidance, protection, help... in short, they pray for his positive intervention in their lives. But they also admit that they're subject to the whims of fate (Ecclesiastes 9:11). Which is why so many of them say "god willing" when they make plans.

If we're subject to "god's will" and everything happens in accordance with his will and his divine plan, then prayer seems superfluous. If I had a trip to make the next day, I could pray to god for a safe return and then turn around and depart with "see you next week, god willing!" And if he wasn't willing, then my prayer wouldn't matter because he wasn't going to protect me from that bullet that has my name on it. For all I know, my death was integral to his plans and so he put my name on that bullet. My prayer didn't make any difference. Heck, I invalidated it myself the moment I admitted that my safe return depended on something other than that prayer.

Is that kind of prayer superfluous to the believer, or is it more of an attempt to better the odds? Maybe there was a bullet with your name on it, but god deflects it because you prayed. Otherwise, he'd have let it follow its trajectory. And if he decided that this was your time to go, he might even make sure it was a hollow point, or something. A quick, painless kill.

Unless it's his will that you suffer horribly before you die, that is.