The papers are on the dining table. They have been there since Thursday, under the fruit bowl, as if the bowl might keep them from being true. The buyer’s attorney wants signatures by Monday. The house has been in your name for nineteen years. The children learned to walk on these tiles. And after the job went, and the savings went, and the arrears letters stopped being polite, there is no honest way left to keep it.
Tonight everyone else is asleep. You are sitting in the dark kitchen with the fridge humming, and you do not know how to pray.
A garden, a night and a prayer that asked for a way out
There is a night in the Gospels that belongs to people in exactly this place. Jesus goes out to the Mount of Olives, to the garden called Gethsemane. He takes his closest friends and asks them to stay awake with him. Then he goes a little further on his own, falls down, and prays.
Luke tells us that he was in such anguish that his sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:44). And the prayer he prays is not polished. It is a request to be spared: “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42, NKJV).
Notice the order. First, the honest asking. Only then, the surrender. Jesus does not skip the first half to look more spiritual. He tells his Father plainly that he does not want this.
That gives us permission. You are allowed to say, at that dining table, “Lord, I do not want to sell this house. Please make another way.” It is not a lack of faith. It is the kind of prayer the Son of God prayed.
When the people closest to you fall asleep
When Jesus comes back to his friends, he finds them sleeping. He asks Peter whether they could not keep watch with him even one hour (Matthew 26:40). It is one of the loneliest lines in Scripture.
Hardship at home often has this loneliness in it. Your spouse may be carrying it differently, perhaps more quietly, perhaps by refusing to talk about it at all. The children do not understand why the good plates are already being wrapped in newspaper. The church sisters who promised to pray have gone back to their own full lives. Relatives abroad send a voice note, and it helps, but they are not sitting in this kitchen.
The garden tells us that feeling alone is not proof that God has left. Jesus himself felt the weight of being unaccompanied, and yet Luke records that an angel appeared from heaven and strengthened him (Luke 22:43). The strength did not remove the cup. It helped him drink it.
Sometimes that is what God sends to a household in a hard season. Not a last-minute cheque, though he can send those too. Instead, strength for the next small task: the phone call to the removal van, the conversation with the landlord of the flat you will rent, the moment you hand over the keys without bitterness.
Not my will, and what that does not mean
“Not my will” can be misheard. It does not mean pretending you are fine. It does not mean the loss is secretly good, or that you caused it, or that God is punishing you for the extension you should never have built. Nor does it mean you should stop taking sensible steps: speaking to your lender, getting proper advice from an attorney-at-law before you sign, making sure the sale is handled cleanly so you can start again without new debts hanging over you.
It means you are placing the outcome in hands larger than yours. You have asked. You have wept. You have done what you can. Now you trust that the Father who did not abandon his Son in the garden will not abandon your family in the rented flat either.
The joy set before us
The letter to the Hebrews looks back on that night and the day that followed it, and says something surprising. Jesus, it says, “for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2, NKJV).
Joy was not the feeling in the garden. It was what lay beyond it. The shame was real, and in our culture the shame of losing a house can be heavy: the neighbours watching the van, the talk in the district, the sense that you have failed your parents who sacrificed so much. Hebrews does not deny shame. It says Jesus despised it, which is to say he refused to let it have the final word about who he was.
Your worth before God was never written on a title. The home was a gift, and gifts can be lost. The family who laughed in it, prayed in it and argued in it is still here, and so is the God who went with you through every room.
For reflection
- Have you told God honestly what you do not want, or have you jumped straight to trying to sound surrendered?
- Who in your household is carrying this hardship quietly, and how could you keep watch with them tonight?
A prayer
Father, you know what is on this table and what it costs us. If there is another way, please open it. If there is not, give us strength for each small step, keep our family close, and lift the shame from our shoulders. Not our will, but yours. In Jesus’s name, Amen.
This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.
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