No joy accompanies a prayer that’s been returned to sender. The leaden, silent skies mock our attempts to penetrate them. Our words deflect and fall to the soil that’s been dampened by our tears and packed hard by our restless pacing.
Anyone who has prayed to God has known the bitter non-answer. It dries a person up:
I stretch out my hands to you;
my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. (Psalm 143:6 NRSV)
The soul’s dessication makes us pray with fresh fervor though seldom with enlarged resources. If God will not answer, we are done. Time is wasting, we’ve got very little left:
Answer me quickly, O LORD;
my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face from me,
or I shall be like those who go down to the Pit.
Psalm 143 offers no assurance. Its gift is the small portrait it presents of a man or a woman praying with desperation. We too pound our souls against heaven’s unyielding door in just this way.
There is blessing—just a little—in knowing we are not the first. Or the only.
Other facets of the biblical anthology will respond to the psalmist’s soul-sapping plight in their fashion. This psalmist, however, has nothing left to say. He can only wait.
Canter Bridge 
Yes, there is blessing in knowing we are not the first or the only. Thank you for leaving this psalm where it leaves us. Roselyn