A prayer for the family
The prayer
Lord, this is my family. It is not the one I would have assembled, but it is the one I have and the one I love.
Bless the table, including the days it goes quiet. Bless the house, including the days nobody looks up.
Where we have hurt each other, make somebody take the first step. Preferably me.
Keep the ones who live here and the ones who left. Keep the ones who still visit and the ones who stopped.
And teach us to put up with each other while we are still learning to understand each other.
Amen.
In short
This is a prayer for the family as it actually is, written for this site and signed. It does not describe the family in the photograph: it asks a blessing on the silent table, on whoever has left the house, and on the first step after a hurt — preferably yours.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 5 min read
When to pray it
Before a meal with everyone around the table, and above all before one where somebody will be missing. It also works said alone, in the car, before going in.
The prayer above asks for something small where almost every other one asks for something large. It does not ask for harmony, unity or peace in the house: it asks that somebody take the first step, and volunteers for the job. That is a practical difference. Harmony does not depend on you; the first step does, and it is usually the only piece on the board within reach of whoever is praying.
The fourth stanza is the one that tends to catch people. “The ones who left” covers the child who moved out, the sibling who withdrew, the relative who died and the marriage that ended — and the prayer does not ask for any of them to come back, because not all of them can and some of them should not. It asks for keeping, which is what you can ask for on behalf of somebody outside your reach.
A word about what “peace at home” does not mean. Where somebody inside the house is assaulting, threatening or controlling the others who live there, that is not a problem of coexistence to be solved with more patience, and praying for your family obliges nobody to stay where they are being hurt. Asking for keeping over the ones who left applies just as much to the one who needs to leave.
Where this prayer comes from
When it appeared Written for Faith Flame in 2026
Praying over your own household is older than the word “family” in the sense we give it. What the biblical texts bless is the whole house — the people, whoever works there, whoever sleeps there — and the blessing said over a table is the most unbroken domestic gesture in Christianity, practised without interruption since before there were church buildings.
This prayer was written for this site, and it is signed. It came out of a plain observation: almost every prayer for the family in circulation describes a family that does not exist. People who get along, a full table, everyone present. Whoever searches for a prayer for the family is rarely having that day. They are having the other one, with the subject nobody touches and the empty chair.
Scripture helps here more than devotional writing usually admits, because the families it follows closely are nearly all broken. Jacob deceives his father and spends his life being deceived. Jacob’s sons sell a brother and lie about it for twenty years. None of this is presented as a regrettable exception — it is the material the text works with.
Little-known details
The verse framed on the wall is a challenge, and four verses later Joshua contradicts it
Jesus redefines family in front of his own mother
What the passages say
15But if it seems evil to you that you would serve the Lord, a choice is given to you. Choose today what pleases you, and whom you ought to serve above all else, either the gods that your fathers served in Mesopotamia, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Read on its own it is a statement of household faith. Read in the chapter it is an ultimatum put to a people who have just been reminded of every god they used to serve. The force of the line is that it is a choice declared in public, not a description of the mood indoors.
31And his mother and brothers arrived. And standing outside, they sent to him, calling him.
32And the crowd was sitting around him. And they said to him, “Behold, your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.”
33And responding to them, he said, “Who is my mother and my brothers?”
34And looking around at those who were sitting all around him, he said: “Behold, my mother and my brothers.
35For whoever has done the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister and mother.”
The passage unsettles people because it looks like coldness towards his own mother, and it is not. What it does is widen the definition of family beyond blood — which, for anyone who grew up in a bad house, is the only genuinely good news Scripture offers on the subject.
12Therefore, clothe yourselves like the elect of God: holy and beloved, with hearts of mercy, kindness, humility, modesty, and patience.
13Support one another, and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive one another. For just as the Lord has forgiven you, so also must you do.
14And above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection.
The list is behaviour rather than feeling: mercy, kindness, humility, modesty, patience. None of them requires liking the other person at the moment it is practised, which makes the passage usable in a real family, where liking is intermittent.
9Therefore, it is better for two to be together, than for one to be alone. For they have the advantage of their companionship.
10If one falls, he shall be supported by the other. Woe to one who is alone. For when he falls, he has no one to lift him up.
11And if two are sleeping, they warm one another. How can one person alone be warmed?
12And if a man can prevail against one, two may withstand him, and a threefold cord is broken with difficulty.
It is the wedding reading, but its actual subject is wider and more useful here: the argument is about falling and about cold — that is, about the moments when one person alone does not get up and does not get warm. That is the concrete function of a family, and it can survive between people who do not understand each other.