အနွံ ၁၄
ပျဲနမ့ၣ်အူဒၢကပီၤထီၣ်
မးသဲ ၅:၁၄-၁၆ – ‘‘သုဝဲဒၣ်အံၤသုမ့ၢ်ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်အကပီၤလီၤ. ဝ့ၢ်တဝ့ၢ်အိၣ်ဝဲလၢကစၢၢ်ဒီခိၣ်န့ၣ်အိၣ်တဒၢတသ့ဘၣ်.
ပှၤဒွဲၣ်ထီၣ်မ့ၣ်အူဒၢ, ဒိီးပာ်အီၤလၢနာ်အဖီလာ်န့ၣ်တအိၣ်ဘၣ်နီတဂၤဘၣ်. မ့ၢ်ပာ်အီၤလၢမ့ၣ်အူဒၢအလီၢ်အဖီခိၣ်, ဒီးကပီၤထီၣ်န့ၢ်ပှၤလၢဟံၣ်ပူၤခဲလၢာ်လီၤ. ဒ်န့ၣ်အသိး သုတၢ်ကပီၤန့ၣ်ဒုးကပီၤထီၣ်အီၤလၢပှၤကညီအမဲာ်ညါ ဒ်သိးအကထံၣ်ဘၣ်သုမၤတၢ်ဂ့ၤ, ဒီး စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤသုပၢ်အိၣ်လၢမူခိၣ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.’’
ယဟဲတုၤကီၢ်အမဲရကၤ ဖဲနိၣ်ဝ့ဘၢၣ် ၅သီ, ၂၀၀၉ လီၤ. ယအိၣ်ကန့ၢ်ခံလါဝံၤ ယစးထီၣ်ပတံထီၣ်တၢ်မၤသၢခါဒီး တၢ်မၤသၢခါ လၢာ်ကိးယၤသနာ်က့ ခီဖျိလၢယနီၤကါတသ့ဒံးအဃိ ယဘၣ်ဃုထၢတၢ်မၤလၢ အဘူးကတၢၢ်ဒီး ယအိၣ်ဟံၣ်တဖျၢၣ်လၢအမ့ၢ် တၢ်ကူးသ့ၣ်ကူးဝၣ်ဒီး တၢ်သူၣ်သ့ၣ်သူၣ်ဖီ (Mead Tree and Landscaping) န့ၣ်လီၤ. ကိးဂီၤဒဲးဖဲယလဲၤတုၤတၢ်မၤလီၢ် ယဘၣ်ဆီၣ်လီၤယစုမုၢ်, ဝံၤဒီးပအီၣ်သကိးတၢ်တချုးပလဲၤဆူတၢ်မၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်လၢယနၢ်ဟူဘၣ်ကိးဂီၤကိးဟါ မ့ၢ်ဝဲဒၣ်တၢ် ကတိၤဆါလိာ်သး, တၢ်ကတိၤလိာ်ကွဲလိာ်သးဒီးတၢ်ဆိၣ်တၢ်ထုတဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်ကီဘၣ်ယသးလီၤ. ခီဖျိလၢယမ့ၢ်ခရံာ်ဖိအဃိ တၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အံၤမၤတံာ်တာ်ယသးဒိၣ်မးန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ယွၤကလုၢ်ကထါ ဒုးသ့ၣ်နီၣ်ယၤဖဲလံာ်မးသဲ ၅:၁၄-၁၆လီၤ. ပမ့ၢ် ဟီၣ်ခိၣ် အတၢ်ကပီၤ, ပမ့ၢ်ပနဲတၢၣ်, ပဘၣ်ဒွဲၣ်ကပီၤထီၣ်ပပနဲတၢၣ် ဒီးဒုးကပီၤထီၣ်လၢဟီၣ်ခိၣ်အမဲာ်ညါ ဒ်သိးပှၤကထံၣ်ဘၣ် ပတၢ်ကပီၤဒီး ကစံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤပပၢ်အိၣ်လၢမူခိၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပကရူၢ်န့ၣ် ပအိၣ်သၢဂၤလီၤ. ပကရူၢ်ခိၣ် မ့ၢ်ပှၤစပဲန့းၡ်, ဒီး ပှၤမၤ တၢ်အဂၤတဂၤမ့ၢ်စ့ၢ်ကီးပှၤစပဲန့းၡ်ဖိန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပမၤသကိးတၢ်အခီၣ်ထံးသီအခါ တဖျါလၢပကကဲထီၣ်တံၤသကိးလၢအဂ့ၤဘၣ်. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ဒ်ယမ့ၢ်ခရံာ်ဖိတဂၤအသိး, ယကျဲးစၢးဟံးဃာ်ခရံာ်အတၢ်အဲၣ်တၢ်ကွံ လၢယသးပူၤဒီးယသ့ၣ်ညါဘၣ်လၢခံန့ၣ် ခရံာ်ဖိ အတၢ်အိၣ်မူမၤနၢၤကွံာ်အဝဲသ့ၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဒ်ယတဲတ့ၢ်လၢထးအသိး ဂီၤ, ဟါ, ဂီၤ, ဟါ ထီဘိန့ၣ် ယနၢ်ဟူဘၣ်ထဲတၢ်ကတိၤလၢ အတဂ့ၤတဖၣ်အဃိ, ဖဲအသ့ ယဟးအိၣ်စီၤစုာ် ဒီးပှၤမၤတၢ်ဖိသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်ထီဘိန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယတအဲၣ်ဒိးနၢ်ဟူတၢ်ကတိၤဘၣ်အၢ ဒီးယတအဲၣ်ဒိးတဲသကိးတၢ်ဒီးအဝဲသ့ၣ်အါအါဘၣ်. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်တဟါဖဲပဟဲက့ၤတုၤပတၢ်မၤလီၢ်အခါ, တၢ်တဲပှၤလၢ ပခီပနံၣ်ခိၣ် အဲၣ်ဒိးထံၣ်လိာ်သးဒီးပှၤမၤတၢ်ဖိကိးဂၤအဃိ ပဘၣ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်တပူၤဃီန့ၣ်လီၤ. တချုးလၢတၢ်မၤခိၣ်ဟဲ အဆၢကတီၢ်န့ၣ် ပှၤမၤ တၢ်ဖိသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်စးထီၣ်ကတိၤလိာ်ကွဲသး, ကတိၤဆါလိာ်သး လၢတၢ်ကတိၤတဂ့ၤတဘၣ်တဖၣ်လီၤ. ကိၤလၤဝါအကျါတဂၤ ကတိၤဆါ ပှၤစပဲန့းၡ် ဒီးအဝဲကတိၤဆါက့ၤအီၤလီၤ. ဖဲန့ၣ်ကိၤလၤဝါတဂၤန့ၣ်ကွၢ်ဃီၤယၤဒီးသံကွၢ်ယၤ တၢ်ဆိၣ်တၢ်ကတိၤ တဖျၢၣ်လၢယကျိာ်ပှၤကတိၤဒ်လဲၣ်လီၤ. တဘျီဃီယသကိး ပှၤစပဲန့းၡ်ဖိ လၢအမၤသကိးတၢ်ဒီးယၤတဂၤ ကတိၤဆၢန့ၢ်လၢ ယဂီၢ်ဒီးတဲအီၤ, ‘‘အဝဲမ့ၢ်ပှၤခရံာ်ဖိ, တကတိၤဆါတၢ်, တဆိၣ်တၢ်ဒ်သိးနၤဘၣ်.’’ ဖဲန့ၣ်တဘျီဃီကိၤလၤဝါတဂၤန့ၣ်တဲက့ၤယၤ sorry ဒီး အဝဲဃ့ဝံသးစူၤယၤဒီးတဲလိာ်ကွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဒီးပှၤအဂၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လီၤ. တလိၣ်ယတဲဆၢတၢ်နီတမံၤဘၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်လၢ ယအဲၣ်ဒိးတဲဖဲအံၤန့ၣ် ဒ်ပမ့ၢ်ခရံာ်ဖိတဂၤ, ပကဘၣ်သဂၢၢ်လိာ်ပသးဒီးပှၤအိၣ်ဝဲအါမးလၢပတၢ်ဖံး တၢ်မၤလၢနီၢ်ခိတကပၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပကထံၣ်ဘၣ်ဒီး ပှၤလၢအသကဲာ်ပဝးလီၤဆီ, ပှၤလၢအကွၢ်တလီၤပှၤ, ပှၤလၢတမုာ်ဒီးပှၤ, ဒီး ပှၤလၢအအဲၣ်ဒိးဆီၣ်သနံးပှၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဒ်ပမ့ၢ်ခရံာ်ဖိအသိး ပမ့ၢ်ဟံးဃာ်ခရံာ်ဖိအသူးအသ့ၣ်, အိၣ်မူဂၢၢ်ကျၢၤဒ်ခရံာ်ဖိတဂၤ, ကျဲးစၢးတူၢ်ဆါပသး, ဒီး မၤသကိးတၢ်အဂ့ၤ ကတၢၢ်အဃိ ပကလဲလိာ်က့ၤ အဝဲသ့ၣ်အသးသ့ ဒ်ယွၤအကလုၢ်ကထါစံးဝဲ ‘ပပာ်ဖှိၣ်မ့ၣ်အူကဖးလၢပဒုၣ်ပဒါအဖီခိၣ်’ ဒီး အဝဲ သ့ၣ်ကထံၣ်ဘၣ်ခရံာ်လၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူပူၤ လၢအလီၤဆီန့ၢ် ပှၤအဂၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အတၢ်အိၣ်မူ န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်ကတိၤအိၣ်ဝဲ, ‘‘ထိၣ်အဝါ တဘ့ၣ်မ့ၢ်အိၣ်လၢထိၣ်အသူခွံဘ့ၣ်အကျါန့ၣ် ယံာ်ယံာ်ကဲထီၣ်က့ၤထိၣ်အသူန့ၣ်လီၤ.’’ ယစံးဘျုးယွၤမ့ၢ်လၢအဝဲနဲၣ်ယၤ ဒီးမၤစၢၤ ယၤ ဒ်သိးယတအိၣ်မူမၤထွဲ ပှၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လၢအကတိၤတၢ်ရၢၢ်စၢၢ်, ဆိၣ်တၢ်ထုတၢ်, အိတၢ်အီၣ်တၢ်ဘၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယနာ်လၢ ပှၤကအိၣ်ဝဲအါမးလၢ ကဘၣ်လဲၤခီဖျိတၢ်ဒ်သိးယၤအသိး လၢအတၢ်အိၣ်မူ, အတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဆၢမုၢ်လၢ်လၢ ပကဟံးဃာ်ခရံာ်ဖိအတၢ်အိၣ်မူလၢအဂ့ၤလၢပတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤအပူၤ, ဒီး လၢပဃိခရံာ်အလၤကပီၤကအိၣ်ဖျါထီၣ် ဒီးပှၤအဂၤကထံၣ် ဘၣ်ခရံာ်လၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူအပူၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.
သရၣ်အ့ဘ့ၣ်န့စၢ်ကူၣ်
ဖီးထ်ဝၢးသ်, ထဲးက်စၢးစ်ကီၢ်စဲၣ်
တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
မုၢ်မဆါတနံၤအံၤ ပထံၣ်ဘၣ်လၢပှၤကွၢ်တလီၤအါထီၣ်ခရံာ်ဖိတဖၣ်, လီၤဆီဒၣ်တၢ်ဖဲပတလီၤဂာ်ဒ်ပှၤအံၤတဃၣ်ဖိအဃိလီၤ. အါစုအါဘျီ, ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါ တၢ်မၤတၢ်ဒဲးဘးလီၤ. ဟီၣ်ခိၣ် အဲၣ်ဒိးမၢပသးလီသးကွံတၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လၢမ့ၢ်ဒၣ် တစိၢ်တလီၢ်, ဒီး ညိကွံာ်တၢ်အရ့ဒိၣ်လၢတၢ်လီၤစိၢ်လီၤထီန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဟီၣ်ခိၣ် လ့ပစီပှၤဒ်သိးပကပိာ်ထွဲတၢ်ဒဲးဘးအကျဲတဖၣ်လၢ အပာ်ဝဲဒ်တမ့ၢ်တၢ်နီတမံၤ, ဒီးမ့ၢ်ဒၣ်ထဲတၢ်လိာ်ကွဲ, တၢ်လီၤနံၤလီၤအ့န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပမ့ၢ်လဲၤနုာ်ဘၣ်ဆူအဆဲလူၤအပူၤဒီး တဆီဘၣ် တဆီပလီၤထွံကွံာ်သ့န့ၣ်လီၤ. ကစၢ်ခရံာ်အနီၢ်ကစၢ်တဲပှၤအဘျီဘျီ လၢ ‘‘ပလီၢ်သုသးတက့ၢ်.’’
လၢနခရံာ်ဖိအတၢ်အိၣ်မူအပူၤ, တၢ်မနုၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်ကွဲန့ၢ်နၤလၢနကဘၣ်လီၤဂာ်ဒ်ပှၤအံၤတဃၣ်ဖိဒ်သိးပှၤကတူၢ်လိာ်နၤလဲၣ်. နဘၣ်တၢ်နံၤဘၣ်ဖၣ်လဲနၤမ့ၢ်လၢနအိၣ်မူဒ်ခရံာ်ဖိဒီးနလီၤဆီလၢပှၤအကျါအဃိဧါ.
တၢ်ကပီၤလၢနကပီၤထီၣ်လၢဟီၣ်ခိၣ်အံၤကပီၤကပြူၢ်ကပြီၤထဲလဲၣ်. သ့ၣ်နီၣ်လၢ နမ့ၢ်ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်အကပီၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်
ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤန့ၣ် တက့ၢ်. ပျဲ နသးစီဆှံအိၣ်ဒီးအီၤ ဖဲအအိၣ်တပူၤလၢ်လၢ် ဒီးလၢအတၢ်ဖံး တၢ်မၤ လၢအမၤဝဲတမံၤလၢ်လၢ်အပူၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဖဲအအိၣ်ဘၣ်လၢ တၢ်အိၣ်ဝးတရံးအီၤလၢ အခံးဝဲဒ် ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်လုၢ်လၢ်အခါ မၤစၢၤအီၤဒ်သိး အဝဲကပီၤထီၣ်ဝဲ ဒ်ခရံာ်ဖိတဂၤ ကန့ၢ်ဝဲန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. မ်ပှၤလၢအအိၣ်မူလၢ ဟီၣ်ခိၣ် အလုၢ်အလၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ် ကထံၣ်ဘၣ်က့ၤတၢ်ကပီၤဖိ ခီဖျိလၢအီၤ ဒီး နမံၤကဘၣ်တၢ်မၤလၤကပီၤအီၤတက့ၢ်. မ်နကဘၣ်တၢ်သ့ၣ်ညါက့ၤနၤ ဒ်နမ့ၢ်တၢ်ဂ့ၤတၢ်ဝါအကစၢ်အသိးတက့ၢ်. သူလၢ်ဘၣ်အီၤလၢ အကကဲထီၣ် ပှၤအုၣ်အသးလၢနဂီၢ် ခီဖျိလၢအတၢ်အိၣ်မူ တၢ်သကဲာ်ပဝး အဂ့ၤအဝါ သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်တက့ၢ်. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤ ယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
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Week 14
LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE BRIGHTLY
Matthew 5:14-16 – “You are the light of the world. A city located on a hill can’t be hidden. Neither do you light a lamp and put it under a measuring basket, but on a stand; and it shines to all who are in the house. Even so, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” (WEB)
I arrived in America on November 5, 2009. Close to two months later, I started job-hunting and applied for three jobs. I got offers from all three jobs but because I did not have a driver’s license, I had to settle for the one closest to my home. I worked with Mead Tree & Landscape Service where I had to cut trees and do landscaping work. Every morning, I would clock in for work and then have my breakfast with my co-workers before starting work. Day in and day out, I would hear my co-workers taunt, mock and swear at each other. This was extremely uncomfortable for me to hear. As a Christian, it was also really distressing for me. But then I was reminded of the Word of God in Matthew 5: 14-16. We are the light of the world. We are candles and we have to light them up for the world so they may see our light and glorify our Father in heaven. I worked in a team together with a Spanish team leader and co-worker. It seemed like we would not get along on the go. But as a Christian, I tried my best to live a godly life. Later on, I would come to realize that living a godly life is sufficient to help them see the light of Christ. Whenever I heard my co-workers utter vulgarities, I tried my best to stay away. I neither wish to hear unpleasant words nor engage in such talks. One afternoon, my boss wanted to speak to us and we were instructed to gather around. Before our boss arrived, the conversations started and quickly became filled with profanity. There was a white co-worker who started speaking rudely to a Spanish co-worker and this went back and forth. My white co-worker then turned to me and asked me what a certain swear word was in my language. Before I could say anything, my Spanish team member responded, “He’s a Christian who doesn’t make fun of people and he doesn’t swear like you either!” Upon hearing this, my white co-worker promptly apologized to me and turned to speak jokingly to other co-workers instead. I did not have to utter a single thing in response.
As Christians, we have to carry our emotions in a proper manner at our workplace. We will encounter many people; some with deplorable character, some who belittle us, those who just cannot get along with us, and even some who will want to oppress us. As Christians, if we are able to uphold our integrity, stay rooted in Christ, have endurance and do the best we can, we can change those around us as the Word of God says, “If we expose our enemies to light,” they will be able to see Christ in our lives that appear so different from others. There is also a saying, “You become what you surround yourself with.” I thank the LORD for sustaining me so I would not succumb to swearing and using drugs. I believe there would be many who would have gone through similar situations like mine. I hope we can all continue to be godly when we are at work so that because of us, the glory of God can be seen and they will see Christ through us.
Pastor Ebenezer Ku
Fort Worth, Texas
REFLECT
These days, we can see a lot of people hating Christians, especially when we behave differently from the world. Sometimes, the world encourages us to engage in hostility, motivates us to desire for things that do not last, and lures us away from what is really important. Some temptations have been suggested as something harmless, such as games and entertainment. But once we enter this web, little by little, we’ll get trapped. Jesus himself has reminded us to “Be careful.”
As a Christian, what are the things in your life that you have compromised so that the world will accept you? Or have you been ridiculed for living a righteous Christian life? How much light are you shining on others in this world? Remember that you are the light of the world!
PRAYER FOR THE READER
Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional. Let Your Holy Spirit be with them and guide them in their work and everything that they do. When Your children are in darkness because of the ways of this world, help them so they can light up as a Christian should. Help those who are in darkness see the light through Your children so that Your name will be glorified. May the world recognize You as our righteous God. May the world see You through Your children because they obey You and choose to live a righteous life. In Jesus’ Name, I pray. Amen.