Picture a grandmother in Mandeville with a list tucked inside her Bible. It is not written in any particular order. There is a son in Brampton and his wife and three children. A daughter in Croydon who is going through a divorce. A grandson doing nursing in Atlanta. A niece who went to the Cayman Islands for work and has not been home in six years. And the two grandchildren who still live with her, in the house her husband built, where the list is read out every morning at the dining table.
Families like hers are ordinary across the Caribbean. The household that once lived under one zinc roof now lives under many: a rented basement in Toronto, a council flat in south London, a townhouse in Georgia. The family is still a family. But its home has been scattered.
Every family named
The famous doxology at the end of Ephesians 3, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20, NKJV), is the closing line of a prayer. It is worth reading the whole prayer, because it begins in a place many scattered families will recognise.
“For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,” Paul writes (Ephesians 3:14-15, NKJV). He is writing, by his own account, as a prisoner, far from the churches he loves. He cannot visit them. He cannot fix their problems. So he kneels, and he prays to the Father who gives every family its name.
That is exactly what the grandmother in Mandeville is doing. She cannot get on a plane to sit with her daughter in Croydon. She cannot check whether her grandson in Atlanta is eating properly. But she can kneel, and name each one before the God who already knows their names.
That Christ may make his home in you
What Paul asks for is striking. Not safety, or prosperity, or a quick end to hardship, though none of those would be wrong to pray for. He prays that they will be strengthened with power in the inner being, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Ephesians 3:17, NKJV).
The word translated “dwell” carries the sense of settling down, taking up residence, being at home. Paul’s great prayer for people he could not reach was that Christ would move in with them, wherever they were.
For families spread across borders, there is deep comfort in that. We cannot always make sure our children have a good house. Rents in big cities are high; the flat may be cramped and cold; the neighbourhood may be unfamiliar and unfriendly. But we can pray that Christ makes his home in them, in the basement flat and the shared house and the room above the shop. He is not limited by immigration status, postcodes or the size of the lease.
Rooted and grounded
Paul goes on to pray that they will be “rooted and grounded in love” (verse 17). Rooted is a gardener’s word; grounded is a builder’s word, the language of foundations. Migration can make people feel uprooted and unfoundationed. The old landmarks are gone. Nobody at the new church knows your people. Your accent marks you out at work.
Paul’s answer is that the deepest root and the surest foundation is not a place but a love: the love of Christ, whose width and length and depth and height he prays they will grasp. That love does not stay behind at the old address. It travels.
Keeping a scattered household together
Prayer is where it starts, but families find other ways to live out this passage too:
- A shared prayer time. Some families gather on a video call on Sunday evenings, across three time zones, to read a psalm and pray for one another by name.
- A family group chat that is not only logistics. Photos of the garden back home, a verse for the week, news of new jobs and new babies.
- Open doors abroad. The son in Brampton becomes the landing place for cousins arriving for study. The daughter in Croydon hosts the Christmas that nobody can afford to fly home for.
- Care for the house at home. Many families pool money to keep the old family house repaired, so there is always somewhere to return to, and so the relatives who stayed are not left carrying it alone.
- Honest conversations about the future. Who will care for the grandmother as she ages? What happens to the house? Talking early spares a lot of pain later.
To all generations
The prayer ends with glory to God “in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever” (verse 21). It is a reminder that God’s work in a family is not confined to one lifetime or one country. The grandmother’s prayers at the dining table in Mandeville may be answered in a flat in Croydon twenty years from now, in a great-grandchild she never meets.
That is what “exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” can look like in a scattered household. Not necessarily a bigger house or a faster visa, though God can give both. More often it is faith passed quietly down a line of kitchens, in different countries and different accents, each one a place where Christ has made his home.
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