လါစဲးပထ့ဘၢၣ် ၂၈

ဖျီၣ်ခံထီခီၣ်ဒီးဂံၢ်ဘါသဟီၣ်

တၢ်ဖးဖျိလံာ်စီဆှံလၢတနံၣ်အတီၢ်ပူၤအဂီၢ် – နၤဃူၣ် ၁, နၤဃူၣ် ၂, နၤဃူၣ် ၃, အ့းဖ့းစူး ၆,  စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤ ၁၁၄:၁-၈

‘‘တၢ်ကတိၤလၢခံကတၢၢ်, ယပုၢ်သ့ၣ်ဝဲၢ်သ့ၣ်ဧၢ, အိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့လၢကစၢ်အပူၤ, ဒီးလၢအဝဲဒၣ် အစိကမီၤအဂံၢ်အဘါ အပူၤတက့ၢ်. သိးထီၣ်ယွၤအစုကဝဲၤခဲလၢာ်, ဒ်သိးသုတြီမုၣ်ကီၤလံၢ် အတၢ်လီတၢ်ဝ့ၤ ကသ့န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. အဂ့ၢ်ဒ်အံၤ, တမ့ၢ်ဘၣ်ပကနိဒီးတၢ်သွံၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်ညၣ်ဘၣ်, မ့ၢ်လၢတၢ်အခိၣ်, ဒီးတၢ်အစိအကမီၤ, ဒီးအအံၤတဃၣ် အတၢ်ခံးအကစၢ်တၢ်နါအိၣ်လၢမူခိၣ်အလီၢ်တဖၣ်လီၤ.’’
အ့းဖ့းစူး ၆:၁၀-၁၂ 

ဖဲမုၢ်နၤယိာ်တ့ၢ်လံအခါန့ၣ်. ယနၢ်ဟူတၢ်ပိၢ်ဖးအကလုၢ် ဖဲမဲၢ်လးပှၤဘၣ်ကီဘၣ်ခဲဒဲကဝီၤအပူၤ လၢအဟဲသီၣ်ထီၣ် လၢ ကစၢၢ်အဘးခီလၢန့ၣ်တခီလီၤ. အနံၣ်မ့ၢ်ဝဲ ၂၀၀၄ လီၤ. ယသိၣ်လိတၢ်ဖဲ ကီၢ်သူလ့ၤကညီဘျၢထံခရံာ်ဖိ လံာ်စီဆှံကၠိ ဒီးခီလ့ၣ်ကၠိအခါလီၤ. ယပျံၤတၢ်လီၤ. မ့ၢ်ပှၤခးကျိအကလုၢ်ဧါ. လံာ်စီဆှံကၠိဖိတဂၤဟဲပၢၢ်ထီၣ်ဖဲ ယပဲတြီလီၤ. အဝဲအဲၣ်ဒိးသ့ၣ်ညါလၢယအိၣ်ဘၣ်လီၢ်ဘၣ်စးကစီဒီဧါန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယသ့ၣ်ညါဘၣ်လၢ ဖဲကစၢၢ်အဘးခီန့ၣ် မ့ၣ်အူအီၣ်တၢ်လီၤ. တၢ်အသီၣ်လၢယနၢ်ဟူန့ၣ်မ့ၢ် ဝၣ်မ့ၣ်အူအီၣ်ဒီးပိၢ်ဖး၀ဲအကလုၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. 

ယကွဲမုာ်ယဲယကၠိဖိမုၣ်လၢယဒၢးအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲစံၣ်ဃဲၤကဒါက့ၤအတၢ်အိၣ်မူ, တချုးအဟဲအိၣ်လၢဒဲကဝီၤ, ဖဲအအိၣ်လၢသဝီအပူၤဒီး ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဘၣ် တၢ်ခးကျိတၢ်ခးမျိာ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. အပၢ်မ့ၢ်ဝဲတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်လၢသဝီ အပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. အပၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ခးသံအီၤလၢအမဲာ်ညါန့ၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲတလဲထီၣ်အနံၣ် ဒီးယထံၣ်ဘၣ်လၢ အကူဝဲ ဖျီၣ်ခံထီခီၣ် လၢအနံၣ်အဖီလာ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. အစံးဝဲလၢသါကူသိးဖျီၣ်ခံထီခီၣ်အံၤ ဒ်သိးကအိၣ်ကတဲာ်ကတီၤအသး လၢအမ့ၢ်ဘၣ်ဃ့ၢ်ပူၤဖျဲးဘၣ်ဖုးအသးလၢ မုၢ်နၤခီအဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယကွၢ်လီၤဆူအမဲာ်ချံအပူၤဒီး ယထံၣ်ဘၣ် တၢ်အိၣ်သးနီၢ်နီၢ်တဖၣ်လၢအဘၣ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဝဲလၢအသးသမူအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယထံၣ်ဘၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီး ပိာ်မုၣ်သးစၢ်တဂၤ လၢအတူၢ်တၢ်ဒီး မၤနၢၤတၢ်, အိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်မုၢ်လၢ်, ဒီး ယူာ်ထီၣ်အသးလၢပှၤအဂၤအအိၣ်ဒ်သိးကမၤလီၤတံၢ်ဝဲလၢ ပှၤအဂၤအိၣ်ဘၣ်လီၢ်ဘၣ်စးလီၤ. လၢခံတနံၤဒီးအဝဲဆ့ၣ်နီၤလၢယတီၤဒၢးအပူၤလီၤ. ဖဲအဝဲဆၢထၢၣ်လၢကဘါ ထုကဖၣ်အကတီၢ်အခါ ယထံၣ်ဘၣ် လၢအဝဲကူဝဲဖျီၣ်ခံထီခီၣ်တဘ့ၣ်အဖၢမုၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. 

တၢ်ဒုးဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤလံာ်စီဆှံဒီးပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ

ပတၢ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်တဖၣ်ကဲထီၣ်တၢ်တြီလၢပကယူာ်ထီၣ်ပသးဆူပှၤအဂၤအအိၣ်ဒ်လဲၣ်. 
ပတၢ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်တဖၣ်ကဲထီၣ်တၢ်တမံၤလၢအမၤစၢၤပှၤလၢ ပကယူာ်ထီၣ်ပသးဆူပှၤအဂၤလၢ တၢ်ဒိသူၣ်ဒိသးဒ်လဲၣ်.  

တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်

ယွၤဧၢ, စံးဘျုးနၤလၢပှၤကညီတဖၣ်လၢအမၤနၢၤတၢ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်လၢအနးအဖှီၣ်, အအၢအသီ, အကီအခဲ အဃိလီၤ. နတၢ်မၤနၢၤတၢ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ် ဖျါထီၣ်လၢပှၤကညီတဖၣ်အတၢ်မၤနၢၤခီဖျိတၢ်လီၤ. စံးဘျုးယွၤ လၢအမၤစၢၤပှၤလၢ ပကလဲၤခီဖျိမၤနၢၤဘၣ်ခါခဲအံၤအဆၢကတီၢ်လီၤ. ပကသန့ၤထီၣ်ပသးဆူညါလၢ နစိနကမီၤလၢအယွၤလီၤပဂံၢ်ပဘါ လီၤ. မ်ယွၤဘၣ်တၢ်စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤအီၤတက့ၢ်. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.

သရၣ်မုၣ်ဒိၣ်မ့ရံၣ်ဝိးဒ်
အမဲရံကၤဘျၢထံတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်တဖၣ်၊ USA, ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ဒီဘ့ၣ်တၢ်သးခုကစီၣ်တၢ်မၤကရၢ
စဝဲၣ်န်ထၣ်န်, အိၣ်ဟါအိၣ်ကီၢ်စဲၣ်

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September 28

LONG PANTS AND STRENGTH

Bible in a Year: Nahum 1, Nahum 2, Nahum 3; Ephesians 6; Psalm  114:1-8

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”  
Ephesians 6:10-12 NRSV

It was late at night. I heard a popping sound in Mae La Karen Refugee Camp on the other side of the mountain. The year was 2004. I was teaching at Kawthoolei Karen Baptist Bible School and College (KKBBSC). I was afraid. Was it gunfire? One of my Bible School students appeared at my door. She wondered if I was okay. There was a fire on the side of the mountain. The sound had been bamboo popping in the heat of the fire.

I invited my student inside. She recounted experiences of shelling in her village before coming to the refugee camp. Her father had been a pastor in the village. He was shot and killed in front of her. She tugged at her longi. I saw that she was wearing sweatpants under her longi. She said it was just in case she needed to run during the night. I looked into her eyes, and I saw the reality of her life. I also noticed a resilient young woman of hope, reaching out to make sure others were okay. The next day, there she was, sitting in my classroom. When she stood for prayer I saw that she was still wearing those sweatpants.

Reflection

How might the realities of life keep us from reaching out to others? 
How might the realities of life be a catalyst to help us to reach out in empathy for others?

Prayer

O God, thank you for the Karen people who have overcome hard evil realities. Your resilient Spirit continues to reveal resiliency in the Karen people!  Thank you God for Your power that helps us overcome this present age. We will continue to lean into that same power as our source of strength in the days to come. Thanks be to God! In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Rev. Mary J. Wood, Volunteer
American Baptist Churches/USA, International Ministries
Swanton, Ohio