လါဒံၣ်စဲဘၢၣ် ၃၁

မၤနၢၤတၢ်အၢလၢတၢ်ဂ့ၤ

တၢ်ဖးဖျိလံာ်စီဆှံလၢတနံၣ်အတီၢ်ပူၤအဂီၢ် – နဃ့မယၤ ၁၃, လီၣ်ဖျါ ၂၂, စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤ ၁၅၀:၁-၅၆

“ပှၤလၢအတတီတလိၤဘၣ်န့ၣ်, ကအိၣ်ဒၣ်ဝဲလၢအတတီတလိၤဘၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဒီးပှၤလၢအအၢအသီန့ၣ်, ကအိၣ်ဒၣ်ဝဲလၢ အအၢအသီတက့ၢ်. ဒီးပှၤလၢအတီအလိၤန့ၣ်, ကအိၣ်ဒၣ်ဝဲလၢအတီအလိၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဒီးပှၤလၢအစီအဆှံန့ၣ်, ကအိၣ်ဒၣ်ဝဲလၢအစီအဆှံတက့ၢ်.”
လီၣ်ဖျါ ၂၂:၁၁

လၢတၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲအဒိၣ်အမုၢ်အပူၤ, နဃ့မယၤဘှီဝဲဝ့ၢ်ခိၣ်ဒူဝံၤဖဲ ၅၂သီအတီၢ်ပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပကဆိကမိၣ်လၢ လံာ်နဃ့မယၤ အဆၢဒိၣ်အလီၢ်ခံကတၢၢ်န့ၣ် ကအိၣ်ပှဲၤဒီးတၢ်သူၣ်ခုသးခု တၢ်မၤနၢၤတဖၣ် ဒီး တၢ်ကလဲၤက့ၤသး ဘၣ်ဘျီးဘၣ်ဒါထီဘိ န့ၣ်လီၤ. သနာ်က့, တၢ်တလဲၤအသးဒ်န့ၣ်ဘၣ်. ဖဲအဟဲက့ၤ လၢဝ့ၢ်ၡူၡၣ်ဝံၤ, နဃ့မယၤ ထံၣ်ဘၣ်ဝဲ တၢ်သဘံၣ်ဘုၣ်, တၢ်အၢတၢ်သီတဖၣ် ဒိၣ်ဒိၣ်အါအါန့ၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဘၣ်ဝဲ တၢ်လၢအတၤအီၤ သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အါမး, ဒီး ဘၣ်မၤဝဲ တၢ်မၤကဆှီက့ၤတၢ် ဒီး တၢ်သုးကျဲၤက့ၤတၢ် အတၢ်မၤတဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢယဂီၢ်, အအံၤလီၤဂာ်လၢတၢ်ဘၣ်ဘှီက့ၤ ဝ့ၢ်ခိၣ်ဒူအသီကဒီး တဘျီန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယကွဲးကျိာ်ထံက့ၤ တၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါ လၢလါဒံၣ်စဲဘၢၣ် ၃၀ အဂီၢ်ဝံၤဒီး, ယအိၣ်ကတီၢ်တစိၢ်ဖိ ဒီး စံးဘျုးယွၤဒ်အံၤလီၤ – ‘‘ယွၤဧၢ, ယစံးဘျုးနၤလၢ ပှၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လၢအဟ့ၣ်ခီဟ့ၣ်နီၤလီၤ အတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိလၢ နလၤကပီၤအဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်ဘျုးလၢနဆှၢလီၤ နမူခိၣ်ကလူးတဖၣ်လၢအမၤစၢၤဆီၣ်ထွဲတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤအံၤ, ဒီး နစိာ်ဆှၢပှၤတုၤလီၤလၢဖဲအံၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.’’ ‘‘ကညီဖိအတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိလၢယွၤအလၤကပီၤအဂီၢ်’’ အတၢ်လဲၤအံၤမ့ၢ်ဝဲတၢ်မၤတခါလၢအဟ့ၣ်ထီၣ်တၢ်သူၣ်မံသးမံ, ဃုာ်ဒီးတၢ်လၢာ်ဂံၢ်လၢာ်ဘါစ့ၢ်ကီးလီၤ. ယမၤလိဘၣ်တၢ်အါမးခီဖျိလၢယမၤသကိးဘၣ်တၢ်လၢတၢ်မၤအံၤလီၤ. ယနၢ်ပၢၢ်အါထီၣ် ပပှၤကညီကလုာ်တဖၣ်အတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိ လၢနးန့ၢ်ဒံးယဆိကမိၣ်, ဒီး ယစံးဘျုးဘၣ်အါထီၣ် ပပှၤ ကညီကလုာ်တဖၣ်လၢ စူၢ်ဝဲနာ်ဝဲဂၢၢ်ဂၢၢ်ကျၢၤကျၢၤလၢ ယွၤန့ၣ်ဂ့ၤဝဲန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်လၢအဒုးသးအုးယၤ အဒိၣ်ကတၢၢ် မ့ၢ်ဝဲလၢ တုၤလၢမုၢ်မဆါအံၤဒၣ်လဲာ် တၢ်ဆီတလဲတအိၣ်ဘၣ်. မ့မ့ၢ်တခီနးထီၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်သူၣ်ဒိၣ်သးဖျိး အိၣ်ပှဲၤလၢ ယသးပူၤ ဖဲယထံၣ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ဟဲကဲထီၣ်သး တခါဘၣ်တခါ ဖဲသုးအၢသုးသီ ဟံးဆူၣ်ထံကီၢ်တၢ်စိကမီၤဝံၤ န့ၣ်လီၤ. မ့ၢ်ဝဲ တၢ်သးအုး, တၢ်သးသ့ၣ်ဖးအဒိၣ်အယိာ် လၢထံကီၢ် တၢ်အိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့အတၢ်မၤအကျိၤအကျဲတဖၣ် လီၤပှီၢ်ဟးဂူာ်ဟးဂီၤကွံာ် ဒီး ပှၤသံအါဒံအါဂၤလၢ ခိဘ့း-၁၉ တၢ်ဆါ အဃိန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပကမၤဘၣ်ဒ်လဲၣ်. ယကစံးယဲ ပကဘၣ်မၤတၢ်လၢစီၤနဃ့မယၤမၤတ့ၢ်ဝဲလီၤ. တၢ်သ့အိၣ်ဒီးပှၤန့ၣ် ပကဘၣ်မၤအီၤ ဒ်သိး ကကဲထီၣ် တၢ်မၤစၢၤ တၢ်ဘျုးတၢ်ဖှိၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပကဘၣ်ဘှီထီၣ်ဝ့ၢ်ခိၣ်ဒူ တခါဘၣ်တခါလၢ ပဒီပုၢ်ဝဲၢ်တဖၣ်အတၢ်ဘံၣ်တၢ်ဘၢ, တၢ်ဒီသဒၢ အဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပတဘၣ်ပျဲတၢ်အၢမၤနၢၤပှၤဘၣ်. ဖဲပှၤအၢပှၤသီတဖၣ်မၤတၢ်တတီတလိၤအခါန့ၣ်, ပကဘၣ်ဃုတၢ်တီ တၢ်လိၤလီၤ. ဖဲပှၤဘၣ်ထွဲဒီး မုၣ်ကီၤလံၢ်လၢ အအဲၣ်ဒိးဒိၣ်စိတၢ်တဖၣ် သူဝဲကျဲဘၣ်အၢဘၣ်သီ လၢ ကပၢပှၤကမျၢၢ် အခါန့ၣ်, ပကဘၣ်ပိာ်တၢ်စီတၢ်ဆှံအကျဲလီၤ. မ်ပသုတသးပ့ၤနီၣ် ပမိၢ်ထံကီၢ်တဘ့ၣ်လၢ ဘၣ်တၢ်အၢဒီး အခိၣ်ဒူ လီၤပှီၢ်လံန့ၣ်တဂ့ၤ. မ်ပကသူၣ်ထီၣ်, ဘှီထီၣ်က့ၤ ပဝ့ၢ်ခိၣ်ဒူ အိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်မုၢ်လၢ် ဒ်သိးပကအီ ဘၣ်ထံမူဟဲလၢ ‘‘ထံမူအကျိဆှံဝဲ ဒ်လၢၢ်ဖျါကလၤအသိး, ဟဲထီၣ်လၢယွၤဒီးသိဖိအလီၢ်ပစိာ်အပူၤ’’ (လီၣ်ဖျါ ၂၂:၁) န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.

တၢ်ဒုးဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤလံာ်စီဆှံဒီးပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ

ပှၤအၢပှၤသီတဖၣ်လ့ပစီနၤဒ်လဲၣ်လၢနကလီၤဂာ်ဒီးအီၤလဲၣ်. နကဟးလၢတၢ်တီတၢ်လိၤအကျဲဒီးဃုတၢ်စီတၢ်ဆှံဒ်လဲၣ်.

တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်

ပၢ်ဧၢ, မၤစၢၤဘၣ်ပှၤဒ်သိး ‘‘ပတဒိးတၢ်မၤနၢၤပှၤလၢတၢ်အၢတၢ်သီတဂ့ၤ. မ့မ့ၢ်ပကမၤနၢၤတၢ်အၢလၢတၢ်ဂ့ၤတက့ၢ်’’ 
(ရိမ့ၤ ၁၂:၂၁). လၢခရံာ်အမံၤပဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.

ထဲစံၣ်ကဒိ
အရံၣ်စိနါကညီဘျၢထံတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်
ဖံန့းက်စ်, အရံၣ်စိနါကီၢ်စဲၣ်

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December 31

OVERCOMING EVIL WITH GOOD

Bible in a Year: Nehemiah 13; Revelation 22; Psalm 150:1-56

“He who acts unjustly, let him act unjustly still. He who is filthy, let him be filthy still. He who is righteous, let him do righteousness still. He who is holy, let him be holy still.”  
Revelation 22:11 WEB

Against all odds Nehemiah was able to accomplish building the wall in 52 days. You would think the last chapter of Nehemiah would end with triumphant jubilation and things would work out pretty well ever after. It was not to be. Upon returning from Susa, Nehemiah discovered chaos and wickedness in leaps and bounds. He faced challenges and had to do the work of purification and reorganization, which, to me, was like having to build the wall all over again. After editing and translating the devotional for December 30, I paused for a moment to whisper to God, “Thank you for those who shared their stories for Your glory. Thank you for bringing Your angels to help with this project and carrying us to this point.” The “Karen Stories for God’s Glory” has been a rewarding, but arduous journey. I learned a great deal from this project, and walked away with a better understanding that our Karen people had it worse than I realized and a greater appreciation for their firm belief in the goodness of God. The saddest part is that things are still the same today, if not worse. Anger swells up within me as I see what has been unfolding after the coup. It is beyond sad and heartbreaking to see the collapse of the healthcare system and people dying and dropping like flies because of COVID-19. 

And so, what do we do? We did what Nehemiah did. We do what we can to make things better. We keep building walls after walls for a fortress of safety and protection for our brothers and sisters as best as we can. We do not let evil overcome us. While the evildoers continue to act unjustly, we continue to seek righteousness. While the power-hungry criminals choose to control the people with filthy tactics, we choose to follow the way of  holiness. Let us NOT forget our motherland, which stands in great trouble and disgrace. Let us build the wall with the hope to drink from “the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Revelation 22:1).

Reflection

In what ways are evildoers tempting you to be more like them? 
How would you walk on the path of righteousness and seek holiness?

Prayer

Father, help us not “to be overcome by the evil acts of the Burmese military, but overcome them with good” (Romans 12:21). In Jesus’ Name I pray. Amen.

Tansy Kadoe
Arizona Karen Baptist Church
Phoenix, Arizona