၇ နွံတနွံ
ယွၤတဟ့ၣ်လီၤကွံာ်ပှၤဆူတၢ်သံဒံးဘၣ်. ပကစံၣ်တဲၤတဲလီၤယွၤအတၢ်မၤ.
စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤ ၁၁၈:၁၇-၁၈ – ‘‘ယတသံဘၣ်, မ့ၢ်ယကမူဒီးစံၣ်တဲၤတဲလီၤယွၤအတၢ်မၤတဖၣ်လီၤ.
ယွၤသိၣ်ဃီၣ်ယၤနးမးလီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ဒီးတဟ့ၣ်လီၤကွံာ်ယၤဆူတၢ်သံဘၣ်.’’
ဖဲ ၁၉၈၀နံၣ် လါအီကူးအပူၤ, ယလဲၤထီၣ်ဘၣ်သုးတၢ်မၤလိလၢယကမၤတၢ်ပၢၢ်ဆၢတၢ်မၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်မၤလိဝံၤန့ၣ် ယဃုထၢ လၢယကမၤသကိးတၢ်လၢသုးတၢ်သိၣ်လိအတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤလီၤ. ယက့ၤထီၣ်တုၤလၢခီၣ်တဃာ်ဟီၣ်ကဝီၤပူၤ လၢမဲၢ်တရီထၣ်သဝီ လီၤ. ဘၣ်ဖဲပဒီပုၢ်ဝဲၢ်တလးကူၢ်တဖၣ် ထီဒါထီၣ်ပှၤအခါ, ဖဲလါဒံၣ်စဲဘၢၣ် ၂၅သီ ဂီၤခီန့ၣ်, အဝဲသ့ၣ်ဟဲခးပှၤလၢ ကွံချၢၣ်သဝီသး ပှၢ်အဟံၣ်လီၤ. ယၤဒီးယသကိးတဂၤ ဘၣ်တၢ်ဖီၣ်န့ၢ်ပှၤဒီး ပဘၣ်လဲၤအိၣ်လၢအကျါ နွံသီညါဘၣ်ဆၣ်, အဝဲသ့ၣ်တမၤသံပှၤဘၣ်. ယတသံဘၣ်.
ဖဲ ၁၉၉၇နံၣ် လါဖ့ၤဘြူၤအါရံၤအပူၤ, ဒုၣ်ဒါဟဲထီၣ်လၢ ပခီၣ်တဃာ်ဟီၣ်ကဝီၤ ဒီး ပဘၣ်ဃ့ၢ်ထီၣ်ဆူကီၢ်ဆၢန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲပလဲၤထီၣ် ဆူကီၢ်ဆၢအခါ, ကျိဖးဒိၣ်တဖျၢၣ်လီၤလၢပမဲာ်ညါဘူးဘူးဖိလီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ပတသံဘၣ်. ယတသံဘၣ်. ဖဲန့ၣ်ပဘၣ်အိၣ်သကိးလၢ ဘၣ်ကီဘၣ်ခဲဒဲကဝီၤပူၤတဆံတနံၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲအိၣ်လၢဒဲကဝီၤပူၤအခါ, မၤလိဘၣ်တၢ်အါမံၤအကျါ, မၤလိဘၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီးလံာ်စီဆှံ တၢ်မၤလိခံနံၣ် န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲ ၂၀၀၈နံၣ် လါယူၤအပူၤန့ၣ်, ယၤဒီးယဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိ ပဟဲသုးပသးဆူ ကီၢ်အမဲရကၤလီၤ. ဖဲ၂၀၀၉နံၣ် အပူၤ, ပဖုသရၣ်ဒိၣ်သးဂ့ၤ ဟဲလီၤဒီးကရၢကရိထီၣ်ပှၤကညီဘျၢထံခဝ့ၡၢၣ် တၢ်မၤလီၢ်တတီၤပအိၣ်အလီၢ် ဒီး အဝဲဒီး အတံၤ သကိး လၢကရၢမိၢ်ပှၢ်ဒီးမုၢ်နုာ်ကဝီၤ ပှၤမၤသကိးတၢ်တဖၣ် ဟဲလီၤပာ်ဂၢၢ်ပာ်ကျၢၤယၤ ဒ်တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်တဂၤ အသိးန့ၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲအံၤယသ့ၣ်ညါလၢ ယွၤတဟ့ၣ်လီၤကွံာ်ယၤဆူ တၢ်သံဒံးဘၣ် ဒ်သိးယကဘၣ်စံၣ်တဲၤတဲလီၤ ယွၤအတၢ်မၤတဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.
ဖဲ၂၀၁၅နံၣ်န့ၣ်, ယလဲၤထီၣ်ဘၣ်ကဒီး ပကရၢမိၢ်ပှၢ် လံာ်စီဆှံကၠိ ဖဲမဲးနံၤစိထၣ်ဒီး တၢ်မၤလိဝံၤဝဲဒၣ်ဂ့ၤဂ့ၤ ဘၣ်ဘၣ်ဖဲ ၂၀၁၇နံၣ်, လါမာ်ၡးအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲလါမ့ၤအပူၤန့ၣ် ဘၣ်မုၢ်တဂီၤ ဖဲယအီၣ်မ့ၤဝံၤဒီး ယဟၢဖၢဆါထီၣ်လီၤ. တခီနၣ်ရံၣ်အပူၤ, ယမၤတကဲ လၢၤဘၣ်အဃိ ယဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိကိးဝဲ (၉၁၁) ဒီးယဘၣ်လဲၤဆူတၢ်ဆါဟံၣ်လီၤ. လွံၢ်သီအတီၢ်ပူၤ, ဘၣ်တၢ်ဖှဲးထုးထီၣ်ကွံာ်ယသဒံ, ခီဖျိ လၢယသဒံပူၤအိၣ်ဒီးလၢၢ်အဃိန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ယတသံဘၣ်. ကစၢ်ယွၤဘၣ်သးလၢ ယကစံၣ်တဲၤတဲလီၤယွၤအတၢ်မၤ တဖၣ် ခီဖျိလၢယတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိတဖၣ်အံၤ မ့ၢ်ဒၣ်ယွၤမၤတၢ်အဒိၣ်တဖၣ်လၢယဂီၢ်ဒီး ယအိၣ်မူသးခုဘၣ်လၢအဃိန့ၣ်လီၤ.
ဖဲယကွဲးတၢ်အုၣ်သး အဆၢကတီၢ်အံၤ, လါအီကူး ၁၅သီ န့ၣ် ပဖုသရၣ်ဒိၣ်သးဂ့ၤ နၢ်ဟူပၢ်လၢ မူခိၣ်အတၢ်ကိးက့ၤအီၤဒီး ဘၣ်ပာ်တ့ၢ်ကွံာ် တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်, ကရၢမိၢ်ပှၢ်, ဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိဒီးပဝဲဒၣ် ကီၢ်အမဲရကၤကီၢ်စၢဖှိၣ် ကညီဘျၢထံတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သကိး တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်ဖိလံၤတဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပှၤကိးဂၤဒဲးအဲၣ်ဘၣ်အီၤ. ယဲစ့ၢ်ကီးယအဲၣ်ဘၣ်အီၤလီၤ. အဝဲဒၣ်ပာ်တ့ၢ်န့ၢ်ပှၤတၢ်ဒိတၢ်တဲာ်လၢ တၢ်စံၣ်တဲၤတဲလီၤကစၢ်ယွၤအကလုၢ်ကထါ, တမ့ၢ်ထဲအနီၢ်ကစၢ်ဒၣ်ဝဲတဲဝဲဘၣ်. မ့မ့ၢ်တခီပနၢ်ဟူဘၣ်က့ၤ လၢပှၤတဲဖျါထီၣ်က့ၤ အတၢ်အိၣ်မူ အတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, မ့ၢ်ဝဲတၢ်စံၣ်တဲၤတဲလီၤအမုာ်, ကဲဘျုးကဲဖှိၣ်တဖၣ်လၢပဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဒ်ပဖုပာ်တ့ၢ်န့ၢ် ပှၤတၢ်အဒိအတဲာ်အဂ့ၤတဖၣ်အသိး ပကစံၣ်တဲၤတဲလီၤယွၤအတၢ်မၤဖဲ ယွၤတဟ့ၣ်လီၤကွံာ်ပှၤဆူ တၢ်သံဒံးဘၣ်အခါန့ၣ်လီၤ.
အဲၣ်ဒိးဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါက့ၤ ဒီပုၢ်ဝဲၢ်ပှၤစူၢ်က့ၤနာ်က့ၤတၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်ဒ်အံၤလီၤ. လၢတၢ်ဆါသံသတြိာ်အဃိ ပဒီပုၢ်ဝဲၢ်ဒီး ပှၤလၢ ပအဲၣ်အီၤတဖၣ်ကစၢ်ယွၤကိးက့ၤအီၤတနီၤနီၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ဒီးပဝဲဒၣ်လၢပအိၣ်မူဘၣ်ဒံးလၢ ယွၤတဟ့ၣ်လီၤကွံာ်ပှၤဆူတၢ်သံ ဒံးဘၣ်အဃိ ဒ်တၢ်သ့တၤလၣ်အိၣ်ဒီးပှၤအသိး မ်ပကစံၣ်တဲၤတဲလီၤယွၤအတၢ်မၤတဖၣ် ခီဖျိလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူသကဲာ်ပဝးတက့ၢ်. မ်ပကသ့ၣ်နီၣ်ဆၢဂ့ၤဆၢဝါလိာ်ပသးဒီး ထုကဖၣ်အါအါ ဒ်သိး ပကစံၣ်တဲၤတဲလီၤဘၣ်ယွၤအတၢ်မၤတဖၣ်လီၤ. မ်ပကသ့ၣ်နီၣ် ထီၣ်က့ၤပကစၢ်ယ့ၣ်ၡူးခရံာ် အတၢ်မၤလိာ်ပှၤလၢ ပကကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်တၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲလၢ ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်လိၤအံၤဘၣ်ဆၣ်, ပမ့ၢ်တီတုၤ လၢအကတၢၢ်ဒီး အဝဲဒၣ်ကဟဲက့ၤကဒါက့ၤဆူဟီၣ်ခိၣ်အံၤလၢ ကဟဲကိးက့ၤ အပှၤစီဆှံတဖၣ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.
သရၣ်အဲၣ်စိမ့
ဘွၣ်စံၣ်, အၣ်ဒၣ်ဟိၣ်ကီၢ်စဲၣ်
တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
သရၣ်အဲၣ်စိမ့ ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဘၣ် ဒုၣ်ဒါအတၢ်ဒုးအီၤတဖၣ် လၢအကဲထီၣ်တၢ်ဘၣ်ယိၣ်လၢအသးသမူအဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. မုၣ်ကီၤလံၢ် အတၢ်တိာ်မ့ၢ်ဒ်သိးကမၤသံအီၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. သနာ်က့ယွၤမၤပူၤဖျဲးသရၣ်လၢတၢ်သံဒီးအဝဲတဲဝဲဒူဒူလၢ, ‘‘ယတသံဘၣ်’’ န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဒ်န့ၣ်အသိး, ကစၢ်ယွၤပာ်မူနၤလၢအတၢ်တိာ်အဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယိၤဟၣ် ၁ဝ:၁၀ (ခ့ခါကျိာ်) စံး, ‘‘တၢ်ဟုၣ်တၢ်ဘျၣ်န့ၣ် ဟဲဝဲဒ်သိးအကဟုၣ်တၢ်, မၤသံတၢ်ဒီးမၤဟးဂီၤတၢ်အဂီၢ်လီၤ. မ့မ့ၢ်ယဲဒၣ်အံၤယဟဲယဲဒ်သိးသုကန့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်မူဒီး န့ၢ်ဘၣ်အီၤအါအါကလဲာ်အဂီၢ်လီၤ.’’ နကဘၣ်ဂ့ၢ်လိာ်လၢနတသံဘၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. နကဘၣ်ဃ့န့ၢ်ဆူၣ်ဆူၣ်သပှၢ်ပှၢ် လၢယွၤအတၢ်ဘၣ်သးကဘၣ်တၢ်မၤအီၤလၢ နတၢ်အိၣ်မူအပူၤလၢလၢပှဲၤပှဲၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.
မုၢ်ကီၤလံၢ်အဲၣ်ဒိးမၢနနာ် တၢ်လီတၢ်ဝ့ၤမနုၤတဖၣ် ဒ်သိးမၤသံနၤကန့ၢ်လဲၣ်.
နခီဆၢမုၣ်ကီၤလံၢ်အတၢ်လီတၢ်ဝ့ၤတဖၣ်လၢ ယွၤအတၢ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်တီမနုၤတဖၣ်ကသ့လဲၣ်.
တၢ်မနုၤတြီဆၢနၤလၢ နကတဲနဲဒူဒူလၢ, ‘‘ယတသံဘၣ်, မ့ၢ်ယကမူဒီးစံၣ်တဲၤတဲလီၤ ယွၤအတၢ်မၤတဖၣ်လီၤ.’’ န့ၣ်လဲၣ်.
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်
ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဟ့ၣ်နဲအီၤ သးအတၢ်ဂံၢ်တၢ်ဘါ ဖဲအလဲၤခီဖျိဘၣ် သးသမူအကလံၤမုၢ်တွၤအခါတက့ၢ်. ဒုးနၢ်ပၢၢ်အီၤလၢ နတၢ်တိာ်ပာ် လၢ တနံၤအံၤနပာ်မူအီၤအံၤ မ့ၢ်ဒ်သိးအဝဲကစံၣ်တဲၤတဲလီၤ နတၢ်မၤလီၤလးလၢနမၤတ့ၢ်လၢအသးသမူအပူၤတဖၣ်အဂီၢ်တက့ၢ်. ဒုးနၢ်ပၢၢ်ဘၣ်အီၤလၢ နစိနကမီၤအိၣ်ဒီးအီၤ လၢ အကလဲၤခီဖျိမၤနၢၤ တၢ်တမံၤလၢ်လၢ်လၢ အအိၣ်နိးအကျဲ လၢကမၤလၤကပီၤနၤအဂီၢ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤအီၤလၢ နီၢ်သးအတၢ်ကူၣ်သ့ဒီး ဒုးထူးထီၣ်တီၤထီၣ်အီၤ လၢနီၢ်သး ဒီး မၤလၢပှဲၤနဲ အဝဲဒၣ်အနီၢ်ခိအတၢ်လိၣ်ဘၣ်လၢ တနံၤဘၣ်တနံၤအဂီၢ် တက့ၢ်. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤ ယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
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Week 7
GOD DID NOT LET DEATH OVERTAKE US; WE WILL PROCLAIM HIS WORK.
Psalm 118:17-18 – “I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done. The Lord has chastened me severely, but he has not given me over to death.” (NIV)
In August 1980, I attended the military school in order to take on revolutionary duties. After completing the school, I decided to work in the area of military training. I went back to Mae Taraw Ta Village in Kaw Ta Ka Region. It was the time when the Da La Ku ethnic group was rising against us. In the morning of December 25, they came and shot at us. I was in the home of the Kwee Lker’s village elder. They captured my friend and me as prisoners and held us for seven days. But they didn’t kill us.
In February 1997, as a result of the enemy advancing to our Kaw Ta Ka Region, we had to flee to the borderland. On the way, a missile exploded right in front of me. But we didn’t die. We ended up in a refugee camp for 11 years. In the camp, I got to learn many things. I also attended Bible School for two years. In June 2008, my family and I immigrated to the United States. In September 2009, Rev. Tha Hgay came to us and organized us as a mission field of the Karen Baptist Convention. A month after, Rev. Tha Hgay and leaders of the West Region confirmed me as a pastor. I knew then God did not let me die to proclaim what He had done.
In 2015, I had the privilege of attending Karen Theological Study Center in Minnesota and graduated in March 2017. In May of the same year, I felt sharp pain in my stomach. I could no longer endure it so my family called 911 and I was admitted to the hospital. In four days, I had a surgery that removed my gallbladder because of the presence of gallstones and the complications they caused. Again, I didn’t die. It is God’s will that I am to proclaim His great work in my life and I am joyful and grateful.
When I am writing this testimony, on August 15, 2021, Rev. Tha Hgay heard God calling him home. He left his church, Karen Baptist Churches USA, his family, and spiritual children. Everyone loved him. I loved him too. Rev. Tha Hgay’s legacy continues to proclaim what the Lord had done, not only in his words but also in the sharing of others about how he touched their lives. Just as Rev. Tha Hgay showed us a good example of what it means to proclaim the goodness of God, let us also do likewise while we are still alive on earth.
Many of our loved ones died because of COVID-19. We are still left on this earth for the purpose of proclaiming the great work of God through our words and living example. Let us remember to do good to one another and pray fervently so we are ready and willing to proclaim what the Lord has done. Let us also remember that Jesus said we would surely have troubles in this world, but if we are faithful to the end, He will come back and gather us as His saints.
Pastor Eh So Min
Boise, Idaho
REFLECT
Pastor Eh Soe Min encountered life-threatening attacks from the enemies. The intent of the devil is for him to die. But God delivered Pastor Eh Soe Min and he declared, “I will not die.” Similarly, God is keeping you alive for a purpose. John 10:10 (NLT) says, “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.”
You must refuse to die. You must insist that God’s will be fully executed in your life.
What are the lies Satan wants you to believe so he can kill you? How can you counter Satan’s lies with the truth of God? What is stopping you from Boldly declaring, “I will not die but live, and I will proclaim what the Lord has done.”
PRAYER FOR THE READER
Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional journal. Strengthen their hearts when they are going through the storms of life. Help them to understand Your purpose for their lives. Let them know they are alive today to proclaim the miraculous work You have done in their lives. May they experience Your power with them each day to overcome any obstructions blocking the passage to glorify You. Lord, bless them with spiritual wisdom, enrich their souls, and fulfill their daily physical needs. In Jesus’ Name I pray. Amen.