What is Prayer?

I received a request to write an explanation of "What is Prayer?" in 50 words. Well, I used a few more words than that, but here is what I wrote:

What is prayer?

Prayer is the voice of faith.

Faith that is created and fed by the Word, cries out to its source - that same Word now made flesh. For faith speaks what it hears. Prayer comes not from ourselves, but from the faith given to us.

And so faith cries out for all that is needed, for all that is needed has been promised by God.
Faith cries out in thanksgiving, for all that is given is given by God.
Faith cries out in sickness and in health, in sorrow and in joy, in good times and in bad, for ourselves and for others, for all things are in His hands.

If our faith falters, so too do our prayers falter.
Then the Word comes with forgiveness to raise our faltering faith and give us life and hope again.
And the voice of faith cries out again.
Never perfect,
until faith is needed no more, when our voices are joined to the choir of angels in the hymn of praise that has no end.

Until then, we live by faith.
And faith speaks in prayer.