လါစဲးပထ့ဘၢၣ် ၉

စ့တမ့ၢ်ယယွၤဘၣ်

တၢ်ဖးဖျိလံာ်စီဆှံလၢတနံၣ်အတီၢ်ပူၤအဂီၢ်- ယၡါယၤ ၂၀, ယၡါယၤ ၂၁, ယၡါယၤ ၂၂, ယၡါယၤ ၂၃,  ၂ကရံၣ်သူး ၁၁:၁-၁၅, ကတိၤဒိ ၂၂:၇-၁၆

“…အဂ့ၢ်ဒ်အံၤ, ယဒုးအဲၣ်တီသုဒီးဝၤတဂၤ, ဒ်သိးယကပာ်သုလၢမုၣ်ကနီၤစီဆှံလၢခရံာ်အမဲာ်ညါလီၤ.’’

၂ကရံၣ်သူး ၁၁:၂

မးသဲ ၆:၂၄ စံး, ‘‘ကစၢ်ခံဂၤအတၢ်မၤန့ၣ်ပှၤမၤတသ့ဘၣ်နီတဂၤဘၣ်. အဂ့ၢ်ဒ်အံၤ, ကသးဟ့အဝဲတဂၤ ဒီး ကအဲၣ်အဝဲတဂၤလီၤ. မ့တမ့ၢ်ဘၣ်ဒီးကဘျုးအသးလၢအဝဲတဂၤ, ဒီးကမၤတရီတပါအဝဲတဂၤလီၤ. ယွၤအတၢ်မၤ, ဒီးမၤမိၣ်အတၢ်မၤန့ၣ်သုမၤတသ့ဘၣ်.’’ ယွၤအတၢ်မၤန့ၣ်တမ့ၢ် ဒ်သိးပကန့ၢ်ဘၣ်ကျိၣ်စ့တၢ်ထူးတၢ်တီၤလၢ ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ဘၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယ့ၣ်ၡူးသိၣ်လိပှၤလၢ ပမၤယွၤအတၢ်န့ၣ်ပတဘၣ်မုၢ်လၢ် ကျိၣ်စ့တၢ်ထူးတၢ်တီၤလၢ ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ဘၣ်. စံးဝဲလၢသုန့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ခဲလၢာ်အလီၢ်အိၣ်ဝဲန့ၣ်သုပၢ်အိၣ်လၢမူခိၣ်သ့ၣ်ညါဝဲလီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ဒ်ပမ့ၢ် ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ဖိအသိးပမ့ၢ်ပှၤဘၣ်ယိၣ်ဘၣ်ဘီ, ပှၤကိၢ်ပှၤဂီၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီးလီၤ. ဖဲ ၁၉၉၈ နံၣ်န့ၣ်ယန့ၢ်ဘၣ်ကဒီး တၢ်ခွဲးတၢ်ယာ်လၢယကလဲၤမၤလိဘၣ်တၢ်လၢထံဂၤကီၢ်ဂၤခီဖျိ ကီၢ်ပယီၤဘျၢထံခဝ့ၡၢၣ်အတၢ်မၤစၢၤဒီး တၢ်မၤလိဘၣ်ထွဲဒီးမံၤလၤဒိၣ်စိတုာ်ဒီးယဃုထၢက့ၤစ့ၤမ့ၤနရံလၢ ယကလဲၤမၤလိ တၢ်ဖဲဖံးလံးပံ Philippines Baptist Theological Seminary (PBTS) အကၠိလီၤ. မ့ၢ်လၢယမိၢ်သးပှၢ်ဒီးယဖိမုၣ် ဆံးဆံးဖိအိၣ်အဃိ ယမၢယမါ ဟးထီၣ်ပဒိၣ်ကၠိသရၣ်မုၣ်အတၢ်မၤဒီး တၢ်အီၣ်တၢ်အီအဂီၢ်ယကဆှၢန့ၢ်အဝဲသ့ၣ် တသ့ဖဲအသ့န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ဖဲအနံၣ်အဝဲန့ၣ် ကျိၣ်စ့အတၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ကရၢကရိလၢအဆီၣ်ထွဲမၤစၢၤအဃိ, အဝဲသ့ၣ်ဟ့ၣ်ဝဲထဲ ယကအီၣ်အဂီၢ်တလါတဘျီလီၤ. တၢ်ကီတဖၣ် အိၣ်ဝးတရံးယၤအဒိၣ်ကတၢၢ်ကျိၣ်စ့အဂ့ၢ်လီၤ. တနံၤလၢတၢ်မၤလိ အလံာ်တဖၣ်အကျါ ယဖးဘၣ်လံာ်လၢအခိၣ်တီမ့ၢ် ‘‘လၢချၢၣ်ဘီဒံးအဖီလာ်’’ (Under the Bo Tree) ဒီးမ့ၢ်တၢ်ကွဲး တမံၤလၢ တၢ်တဲစီၤသီလီၢ်လံၤခံဂၤလၢအထံၣ်လိာ်က့ၤအသးဒီးကတိၤသကိးတၢ်အဂ့ၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တဂၤကဲထီၣ် တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်, ဒီး အတဂၤကဲထီၣ်ပှၤဟးယိးဆါအီၣ်တၢ်တဂၤလီၤ. တုၤတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်ထံၣ် အတံၤသကိး ဟးဆါတၢ်တဂၤ ဒီးအဲၣ်ဒိးမၤတၢ်သးခုကစီၣ်အဃိ, တဲဝဲလၢယွၤအဂ့ၢ်လီၤ. အတံၤသကိးန့ၣ်ထုးထီၣ် အစ့ခံဆံဘး တဘ့ၣ်ဒီးစံးဝဲ ‘‘စ့န့ၣ်မ့ၢ်ယယွၤလီၤ’’ (Money is My God). ဒီးသရၣ်အံၤအဲၣ်ဒိးစံးဝဲလၢ စ့န့ၣ်တမ့ၢ်အယွၤ ဘၣ်. ဒီးအဝဲဒၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီး ထုးထီၣ်အစ့ခံဆံဘးတဘ့ၣ်ဒီး ဖှီဝဲဖဲအဖးဖီ ဒီးစံးဝဲ ‘‘စ့တမ့ၢ်ယယွၤဘၣ်’’ (Money is not my God) လီၤ. စ့လၢမၤကိၢ်မၤဂီၤယသးဒိၣ်မးတမံၤအံၤ ဟးထီၣ်ကွံာ်ဝဲကယီကယီဒီး လၢယသးပူၤန့ၣ် သီၣ်ဒၣ် ‘‘စ့တမ့ၢ်ယယွၤဘၣ်’’ န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယွၤအဘျုးအဃိ, ယမၤဝံၤဘၣ်တၢ်မၤလိခဲလၢာ်ဘၣ်ဆၣ် ယသးတဆူၣ်မၤဝံၤ ယတၢ်ကွဲး (Dissertation) ဘၣ်အဃိတန့ၢ်စ့ၢ်ကီးမံၤလၤဒိၣ်တုာ်ဘၣ်. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ယသးခုဒၣ်ထီဘိလီၤ. 

တၢ်ဒုးဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤလံာ်စီဆှံဒီးပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ

ယမၤယွၤအတၢ်မၤလၢယကအီၣ်ဘၣ်အဂီၢ်ဧါ, ယွၤဒုးအီၣ်ယၤအဃိယမၤအတၢ်မၤဧါ. ယမ့ၢ်ဒုးကဲကျိၣ်စ့လၢယကစၢ်ဒီး ကစၢ်ယွၤတန့ၢ်အလီၢ်လၢယတၢ်အိၣ်မူအပူၤဘၣ်.

တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်   

ပၢ်သးဘိယွၤဧၢ, မၤစၢၤဘၣ်ယၤဒ်သိးယတၢ်နာ်န့ၢ်နၤကအါထီၣ်တက့ၢ်. မၤစၢၤယၤဒ်သိးယကမူလၢနဂီၢ်ဒီးဟ့ၣ်လီၤယသးလၢာ်လၢာ်ဆ့ဆ့ဆူနစုပူၤတက့ၢ်. လၢခရံာ်မံၤယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.

သရၣ်ဒိၣ်စ့စီ 
ကိၣ်သၣ်ဖၠူၣ်ကညီဘျၢထံတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်
ကီၢ်လါ

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 9

MONEY IS NOT MY GOD

Bible in a Year: Isaiah 20, Isaiah 21, Isaiah 22, Isaiah 23; 2 Corinthians 11:1-15; Proverbs 22:7-16

“…For I married you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.”  
2 Corinthians 11:2 WEB

Matthew 6:24 says, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon.” We do not serve God to get money and become rich. Jesus taught us not to expect riches on earth in serving God. He said the Father knows our needs. But as human beings, we worry. In 1998, I got another opportunity through the support of Myanmar Baptist Convention to pursue a doctorate degree at Philippines Baptist Theological Seminary (PBTS). Because my mother was elderly and my daughter was still very young, I asked my wife to quit her job as a teacher and I planned to provide for their needs from afar. However, due to facing financial hardship, the organization sponsoring me could only pay for my meals once a month. The hardest challenge for me was money. One day, I read one of the assigned books called “Under the Bo Tree,” which included a conversation between two ex-monks. One became a pastor and the other became a street vendor. When the pastor met the vendor, he shared the Gospel with his friend. The vendor took out his 20-dollar bill, flaunted it, and said, “Money is my  God.” The pastor also took out his 20-dollar bill, tore it in half, and said, “Money is not my God.” After reading this book, the money that gave me worries gradually dissipated and I kept hearing in my head, “Money is not my God.”  By God’s grace, I finished all the courses, but I did not finish my dissertation and did not get the doctorate degree. However, I am happy as can be. 

Reflection

Do I serve God for what He will provide? Or Do I serve God because He provides for me? If I let money become my God, no place would be vacant for God in my life.

Prayer

Dear Father God, help me so my faith will increase. Guide me so I will live for You and surrender all my life to You. In Jesus’ Name I pray. Amen.

Rev. Say Saw
Ko Tha Byu Karen Baptist Church
Myanmar