၈ နွံတနွံ
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်အစိကမီၤ
ရိမ့ၤ ၁၂:၁၂ – ‘‘လၢတၢ်မုၢ်လၢ်အပူၤန့ၣ်သးခုတက့ၢ်. လၢတၢ်နးတၢ်ဖှီၣ်အပူၤန့ၣ်ဝံသးစူၤတက့ၢ်. လၢတၢ်ထုကဖၣ်အဂ့ၢ်န့ၣ်မၤသပှၢ်ပှၢ်တက့ၢ်.’’
ပဝဲပှၤကညီတကလုာ် ပဘၣ်လဲၤခီဖျိတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိ အကလုာ်ကလုာ် လၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူအပူၤလီၤ. တၢ်အိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့ မ့ၢ်တၢ်တမံၤ လၢအတၤတၢ်ဒီးပှၤထီဘိန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပဒိၣ်ထီၣ်ဘၣ်လၢတၢ်ဖှီၣ်တၢ်ယာ်, တၢ်ဃံးတၢ်စ့ၤအပူၤ ဒီး ပတန့ၢ်ဘၣ် တၢ်အီၣ်န့ၢ်ဂံၢ်န့ၢ်ဘါ တၢ်အိၣ်ဆူအိၣ်ချ့အတၢ်ကဟုကယာ် လၢလၢလီၢ်လီၢ် လၢပတၢ်ဒိၣ်ထီၣ်အပူၤဘၣ်. လၢတၢ်န့ၣ်အဖီခိၣ်န့ၣ် ပကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဘၣ် တၢ်ဆူးတၢ်ဆါတဖၣ် ဒီး တၢ်မၤဆါမၤနးပှၤတဖၣ်လၢနီၢ်ခိဒီးလၢသးန့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢတၢ်ဃ့ၢ်ပူၤဖျဲးသးအပူၤန့ၣ် ပလီၤဒိတဘျီဘျီ, ဒီးတၢ်အီၣ်မ့ၢ်အိၣ်ဒၣ်လဲာ် တမ့ၢ်တၢ်အီၣ်လၢန့ၢ်ဂံၢ်န့ၢ်ဘါ ဒီး ထံလၢအကဆှီဘၣ်. ပထံၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီးလၢ သးသမူအါဖျၢၣ်လီၤမၢ်ကွံာ် ခီဖျိလၢတၢ်ဆူးတၢ်ဆါသ့ၣ်တဖၣ် လၢတမ့ၢ်တၢ်ဆါမနုၤမးလၢထံဒိၣ်ကီၢ်လဲၢ်တဖၣ်အဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. အဃိသး, ထီဘိပဘၣ်သန့ၤ ထီၣ်ပသးထဲဒၣ်လၢယွၤ လၢတၢ်ဆါအဆံးမ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ အဒိၣ်မ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.
ဖဲ ၂၀၂၀နံၣ် လါမ့ၤအပူၤအတ့ၤဂီၤခီအဆၢကတီၢ်ယနီၢ်ကစၢ်ယလဲၤခီဖျိဘၣ်တၢ်ဆါလၢအမ့ၢ်တၢ်ဆံၣ်တထီၣ် အတၢ်ဆါ ဒီးဖဲန့ၣ်အဆၢကတီၢ်ယတူၢ်ဘၣ်ယဲနးနးကလဲာ်, တုၤဒၣ်လဲာ်လၢယကလဲၤဘၣ်လၢဂ့ၢ်ဂီၤအူ (Emergency) တၢ်ဆါဟံၣ်လီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ဒီးမ့ၢ်လၢယဃ့ဘါထုကဖၣ်သပှၢ်ပှၢ်ဒီးယဟံးန့ၢ်(လၢၢ်ဆံၣ်)တက့ဒီးယစုၣ်လီၤအီအထံ, ဒီးယအီအထံတခွးဝံၤ ဒီး ယဃ့ဘါထုကဖၣ်ဒ်အံၤ ‘‘ကစၢ်ဧၢ, ယမ့ၢ်နဖိလၢအဂံၢ်စၢ်တဂၤလီၤ. ထီဘိယသ့ၣ်ညါလၢယမၤကမၣ်ဘၣ်ယဲနၤ လၢယတၢ် အိၣ်မူအပူၤလီၤ. တၢ်ဆါတကလုာ်လၢယတူၢ်ဘၣ်အီၤခဲအံၤယတူၢ်တကဲလၢၤဘၣ်. မ်နသုတဒုးတူၢ်ယၤနးန့ၢ်တၢ်အံၤတဂ့ၤ. လၢဆၢကတီၢ်ခဲအံၤယအိၣ်ဒီးယတၢ်မၤလိနကလုၢ်ကထါတဝံၤဒံးဘၣ်. မ့ၢ်ဝံၤမးဒီးယကတဲဘၣ်နၤလီၤ. ယတအိၣ်ကတဲာ်က တီၤယသးဒံးဘၣ်. ဖဲလၢယအိၣ်ကတဲာ်ကတီၤသးအခါ, ယကအုၣ်ဘၣ်ယသးလၢယဒီပုၢ်ဝဲၢ်ပမဲာ်ညါလၢနမၤယၤလၢတၢ်ဂ့ၤ တဖၣ်လီၤ.’’ ဖဲယဃ့ဘါထုကဖၣ်အဆၢကတီၢ်အဖၢမုၢ်န့ၣ်ယအီလီၤကသံၣ်တခီခီလီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ဒီးယတူၢ်ဘၣ်လၢယဟးတ ကဲလၢၤဘၣ်. ယဆံၣ်အါထီၣ်ဒီးယဆံၣ်ဒၢစ့ၢ်ကီးဟဲကဖိဒိၣ်ထီၣ်ဘၣ်ဆၣ်နာ်က့ယကီၤအီၤဒံးလီၤ. ယတအဲၣ်ဒိးလဲၤဆူတၢ်ဆါ ဟံၣ်ဒံးဘၣ်. ယအိၣ်ကတီၢ်တစိၢ်ဖိလၢတၢ်သးလီၤဘှံးအပူၤ, ဖဲန့ၣ်အဆၢကတီၢ်ယတူၢ်ဘၣ်လၢယအဲၣ်ဒိးဆံၣ်ဆါဒီးယသုးဃီၤ ယသးဆူတၢ်ဟးလီၢ်ဒီးယဆံၣ်ဆါဟဲလီၤအဆိကတၢၢ်တဘျီမ့ၢ်လၢအပာ်ထွဲဒီးအသွံၣ်အဃိ, ယပျံၤတၢ်အါထီၣ်ကဒီးတခါလံ. ခဲအံၤဒုယဘၣ်လဲၤဆူတၢ်ဆါဟံၣ်လီၤသၢၣ်, ဒီးယဆဲးဘါထုကဖၣ်ဒီးအီလီၤကဒီးလၢၢ်ဆံၣ်အထံကဒီးတဘျီလီၤ. မ့ၢ်တလီၤဆီ ဒုယကလဲၤဆူတၢ်ဆါဟံၣ်ဒီးယအိၣ်ကတဲာ်ကတီၤယသးလံလီၤ. ဖဲန့ၣ်အဆၢကတီၢ်လၢတဖျးမဲာ်လၢတၢ်တပာ်သူၣ်ပာ်သးအဆၢ ကတီၢ်, ယဘၣ်သးလဲၤဆံၣ်ဒီးယလဲၤဆူတၢ်ဟးလီၢ်ကဒီးအသီတဘျီလီၤ. ဒီးယလဲၤဒီးယဆံၣ်ဟဲထီၣ်တစဲးဘၣ်တစဲးအါထီၣ် အါထီၣ်ဒီးယအိၣ်မုာ်ထီၣ်က့ၤတစဲးဘၣ်တစဲး, ဒီးယဆိကမိၣ်ကမ့ၢ်ကစၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်မၤကွၢ်ယတၢ်နာ်လီၤ. မ့ၢ်ယတၢ်နာ်အိၣ်ဆံး အါဆံးအါန့ၣ်ကမၤကွၢ်ယၤလၢယတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိတဘျီအံၤလီၤ. ဒီပုၢ်ဝဲၢ်ဧၢ, တၢ်ဆံၣ်တထီၣ်တၢ်ဆါအံၤယတတူၢ်ဘၣ်ယဲ နီတဘျီ ဘၣ်. လၢယတၢ်အိၣ်မူအပူၤယတူၢ်ဘၣ်ယဲမ့ၢ်တၢ်လၢအဆိကတၢၢ်တဘျီဒီးအနးကတၢၢ်လီၤ.
တဘျီဘၣ်တဘျီ ဖဲယတၢ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဘၣ် တၢ်ဆူးတၢ်ဆါ ဖဲလၢထံကီၢ်လၢပအိၣ်ဖျဲၣ်ထီၣ်မ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ, ကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ် မ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ, ထံကီၢ်လၢပအိၣ်အခဲအံၤမ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ, န့ၣ်ကစၢ်ယွၤကူစါပှၤထီဘိလီၤ. တၢ်လၢကစၢ်ယွၤမၤဝဲတသ့န့ၣ်, တအိၣ်ဘၣ်နီတမံၤဘၣ်. မၤဝဲသ့ခဲလၢာ်, အိၣ်ဒီးအစိကမီၤ, မၤတၢ်လီၤလးသ့ဒိၣ်မးတဂၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဒ်အကလုၢ်ကထါ စံးဝဲအသိး တၢ်လၢပကမၤမ့ၢ် လၢတၢ်ထုကဖၣ်န့ၣ် မၤသပှၢ်ပှၢ်တက့ၢ်.
သရၣ်မုၣ်မုာ်သီ
အိမဟၣ်, နဘြၣ်စကၣ်ကီၢ်စဲၣ်
တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
မ့ၢ်နတူၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ဆူးတၢ်ဆါအခဲအံၤဧါ. ဒိၣ်မ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ, ဆံးမ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ, ပြံသွါမ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ, တၢ်ဆူးတၢ်ဆါမၤတံာ်တာ်ပှၤ အအါလၢအစှၤ ဒီး မၤစၢ်ထီၣ်ပသးအသဟီၣ်သ့န့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢတၢ်ဆူးတၢ်ဆါအတၢ်မၤတံာ်တာ်နၤအပူၤ, တၢ်ဟဲမၤဘၣ်ဒိ နတၢ်ပာ်သူၣ်ပာ်သး နလုၢ်နလၢ်ဒ်လဲၣ်. တၢ်ဆီၣ်သနံးဟဲအိၣ်ထီၣ်လၢနီၢ်သးတခီ လၢနဂီၢ်ဒ်လဲၣ်. နကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်တၢ်ဒ်လဲၣ်.
နီၢ်ခိအတၢ်အိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့ဒီးနီၢ်သးအတၢ်အိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့မ့ၢ်တၢ်လၢအစဲဘူးလိာ်သးလီၤ. ဖဲနီၢ်ခိဂံၢ်စၢ်အခါန့ၣ် နီၢ်သးအဂံၢ်စၢ် လီၤသ့စ့ၢ်ကီးလီၤ. ဒ်န့ၣ်အသိး ဖဲနီၢ်သးအဂံၢ်စၢ်အခါ နီၢ်ခိအဂံၢ်စၢ်လီၤသ့စ့ၢ်ကီးလီၤ. ပဘၣ်တၢ်တ့လီၤပှၤလၢ နီၢ်ခိဒီးနီၢ်သးအဃိ အလီၢ်အိၣ်လၢပကဘၣ်အိၣ်ဆူအိၣ်ချ့ခံမံၤခံကပၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ကစၢ်ယ့ၣ်ၡူးခရံာ်အနီၢ်ကစၢ် မ့ၢ်ဝဲကသံၣ်သရၣ်အဂ့ၤကတၢၢ်လၢ အကူစါယါဘျါနီၢ်ခိဒီးနီၢ်သးအတၢ်ဆါတဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပကဘၣ်ဒုးတၢ်လၢတၢ်ဆူးတၢ်ဆါအပူၤလၢကျဲအမံၤမံၤအမၠိအမၠိ ဒီး လၢတၢ်ဒုးသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အံၤအပူၤ မ်ကသ့ၣ်နီၣ်
ယွၤအကလုၢ်ကထါ, ဖျါဖဲ ရိမ့ၤ ၁၂:၁၂,
‘‘လၢတၢ်မုၢ်လၢ်အပူၤန့ၣ်သးခုတက့ၢ်. လၢတၢ်နးတၢ်ဖှီၣ်အပူၤန့ၣ်ဝံသးစူၤတက့ၢ်. လၢတၢ်ထုကဖၣ်အဂ့ၢ်န့ၣ်မၤသပှၢ်ပှၢ်တက့ၢ်.’’
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်
ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ပပၢ်ကစၢ်ယွၤဧၢ, ဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဆိၣ်ဝါဘၣ်နဖိ သ့ၣ်တဖၣ် ဒ်သိးကလဲၤလၢနတၢ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်တီအကျဲ, ကသ့ရ့လိာ်သးဒီးနၤလၢအဝဲသ့ၣ်အတၢ်အိၣ်မူအကျဲတဘိယူၢ်ဃီတက့ၢ်. ကမ့ၢ်ပှၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လၢအဲၣ်ဖးနကလုၢ်ကထါ, သ့မၤလိတၢ်အါထီၣ်, နၢ်ပၢၢ်နတၢ်မၤဂ့ၤမၤစၢၤတဖၣ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. မ်ကမ့ၢ်ပှၤသ့ၣ် တဖၣ်လၢပာ်ဒိၣ်တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်ဒီးကွၢ်ထီၣ်တၢ်လၢနၤတက့ၢ်. ဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤအီၤ, မၤစၢၤအီၤ, ကွၢ်အီၤဒ်နမဲာ်ပှၢ်ဖိအသိးဒီးကဟုကယာ်အီၤ လၢနဒံးဆ့အဖီလာ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ကပူၤဖျဲးလၢတၢ်ဆူးအၢဆါသီ, ဒီးတၢ်လၢပတူၢ်တန့ၢ် ကီၤတကဲသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ် နကဒုးယံၤဘၣ်ဒီး နဖိနလံၤ, ပှၤစူၢ်နၤနာ်နၤကိးဂၤဒဲးန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. အမ့ၢ်ဘၣ်လဲၤခီဖျိ တၢ်ဆူးတၢ်ဆါသ့ၣ် တဖၣ်အဃိ မၤစၢၤအီၤဒ်သိးကဟံးန့ၢ်တၢ်သူၣ်စူၤသးစူၤ, တၢ်မုၢ်လၢ်, တၢ်သးခု လၢနပူၤ, လၢတၢ်ထုကဖၣ်သပှၢ်ပှၢ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ပျဲကွံာ် ပျၢ်ကွံာ်ဘၣ် ပတၢ်ကမၣ်ဒီး တူၢ်လိာ် ဘၣ်ပတၢ်ဃ့ကညးနၤတက့ၢ်. လၢခရံာ်ကစၢ်အမံၤပဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
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Week 8
THE POWER OF PRAYER
Romans 12:12 – “Rejoice in hope, endure in suffering, persist in prayer.” (NLT)
Our Karen people have to go through unfavourable situations and tough struggles in our lives. Health has always been one of our challenges. We grew up impoverished and had to go through restless times. We were malnourished and could not even receive basic healthcare while growing up. As a result, we were prone to diseases and struggled with both physical and mental health issues. During the times we had to flee for our lives, we faced hunger. On occasions where we had something to eat, it was less than nourishing. We drank unclean water. We saw many lives lost due to common illnesses that are easily treatable in developed countries. Because of all these challenges, we could only ceaselessly persist in prayers whether it was a minor or major illness we faced.
Early one morning in May 2020, I suffered from a condition called urinary retention. I was in such immense pain that warranted a visit to the emergency department. But I prayed hard, took a piece of limestone and dissolved it in a glass of water to drink. After drinking this water, I prayed like this, “Lord, I am your child who is weak. I know that in my life I have wronged you many times. I can no longer bear this pain that I’m suffering now. Please don’t let me suffer pain that is worse than this. I am still studying Your Word and learning how to share Your Message with others. I will let You know when I am ready. When I am ready, I will tell others of the great things You have done in my life.” I then took medication as I prayed once more but I felt as if I could no longer walk. I felt my bladder filled up and I was bloated, but still, no flow would come out. I did not want to go to the hospital either. Exhaustion overwhelmed me. But when I finally could go, there was blood in my urine and once again I was overcome with fear. I thought to myself that this time, I have no choice but to make a trip to the hospital. I prayed again and also drank another glass of limestone water. Nothing I did seemed to be of help. I resigned myself and prepared myself to go to the hospital. Without much of a thought, I suddenly felt an urge and was able to go, a little bit by bit at first, and gradually to a normal flow. At the same time, I felt better and better. It was then that I felt as if God was testing my faith. From this ordeal, I felt He was testing the depth of my faith in Him. I had never suffered from urinary retention before and it was such a great ordeal for me. I never had to go through such a physical ordeal in my life, and it was the worst so far.
We have to know that whenever we encounter an illness, whether it is in our place of birth, in Thailand or wherever we are currently living, it is only our Lord who can heal and comfort us. There is nothing that He cannot do. He can do all things, He is Almighty and He can perform miracles. So as it is written, be persistent in prayer in everything you do.
Thramu Mu Thaw
Omaha, Nebraska
REFLECT
Are you suffering from an illness right now? Whether it is a major, minor or just a tiny ailment, an illness can devastate us in big and small ways. It can also consume us entirely. When we encounter illness, our thoughts and emotions are negatively impacted.
How does an illness impact you emotionally? How did it affect your life?
Physical and mental health are interconnected. When your physical health is poor, your mental health is also adversely affected. When your mental health is poor, your physical health will similarly be affected. We were not created solely as a physical being. We were created as a physical and spiritual being. As such, we must live being mindful of both our physical and spiritual health. Jesus Christ is the best physician who can heal both our physical and spiritual issues. We have to fight these illnesses in many different ways. When we fight them, let us remember God’s Word in Romans 12:2 where it is written,
“Rejoice in hope, endure in suffering, persist in prayer.”
PRAYER FOR THE READER
Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional journal. Father God, bless Your children so that they will walk on the righteous path and make fellowship with You in their lives always. May Your children delight in Your Word, meditate on Your Word, and understand Your good works. May Your children seek You in prayer. Bless them, help them, and provide for them a refuge under Your wings. Protect Your faithful children from illnesses and keep them away from sufferings that are unbearable. When they are ill, help them so that they will find endurance, hope and joy in You when they seek You in prayer. Forgive us from our sins. In Jesus’ Name, I pray. Amen.