အနွံ ၂၁
ယတပျံၤဘၣ်တၢ်အၢဘၣ်. အဂ့ၢ်ဒ်အံၤနအိၣ်ဒီးယၤလီၤ.
စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤ ၂၃:၄ – ‘‘တုၤယလဲၤလၢတၢ်သံအကဒုအကစၢၢ်ကဆူးပူၤဒၣ်လဲာ်န့ၣ်, ယတပျံၤတၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်အၢဘၣ်. အဂ့ၢ်ဒ်အံၤ, နအိၣ်ဒီးယၤလီၤ.’’
စးထီၣ်ဖဲ ၁၉၉၇ နံၣ်န့ၣ် ပဝဲပှၤကညီဖိလၢအအိၣ်လၢ ဘျံးဒဝဲၢ်တဖၣ် ဘၣ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဒီးသုးမီၤစိရိၤ အတၢ်ထီၣ်ဒုးန့ၢ်ကွံာ် တၢ်ပၢၢ်ဆၢအလီၢ်ခၢၣ်သး တၢ်လီၢ်တဖၣ် ဒီးကီၢ်ရ့ၢ်လီၤကွံာ်ဝဲန့ၣ်လီၤ. သဝီဖဲအအိၣ်လၢ သနီသရံၣ်အထံကျိကပၤတဖၣ် ပယီၤ သုးဒွဲၣ်အူကွံာ်လၢမ့ၣ်အူအဃိ ကဲထီၣ်ကွံာ်သဝီဟးဂီၤ ဒီးသဝီဖိတဖၣ်တနီၤ ဃ့ၢ်အိၣ်ခူသူၣ်လၢပှၢ်ဒိၣ်ယိာ်, တနီၤဆူယိၤကီၢ်ဆၢ, တနီၤနုာ်လီၤဃ့ၢ်ဆူကီၢ်ပယီၤ, ဒီးတနီၤဆူဘၣ်ကီဘၣ်ခဲဒဲကဝီၤပူၤလီၤ. ယဒီပုၢ်ဝဲၢ်တနီၤ ဃ့ၢ်လီၤဆူ ဘၣ်ကီဘၣ်ခဲ ဒဲကဝီၤလီၤ. ယၤဒီးယမိယပါ ဒီးဒီပုၢ်ဝဲၢ်တနီၤတခီ ပက့ၤလီၤအိၣ်လၢကညီသဝီလၢအအိၣ်လၢ ကီၢ်ပယီၤတၢ်ပၢအပူၤလီၤ. ထံကီၢ်တမုာ် တခုၣ်ဒီး တၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤလၢကျိၣ်စ့ဟဲနုာ်အကျဲတအိၣ်ဘၣ်. တဘျီပှၤတဲယၤလၢ ဆၣ်ဖိကီၢ်ဖိတကလုာ်လၢအမ့ၢ် ဆှီ (ဖျံ) အဖံးန့ၣ်အပှ့ၤဂ့ၤဒိၣ်မးလီၤ. နမ့ၢ်မၤန့ၢ်ဆှီတဒုန့ၣ် အပှ့ၤကန့ၢ်လၢစ့ပယီၤ တကလီၢ်ကၠးလီၤ. ယၤဒီးယသကိးတဂၤလၢအသ့ၣ်ညါ နီၣ်တၢ်လီၢ်တၢ်ကျဲလၢဆှီအိၣ်ဝဲအလီၢ်, လၢတၢ်သူၣ်ပိၢ်သးဝးအပူၤ, ပလဲၤဆူ ပှၢ်ဒိၣ်ယိာ်လၢ ဆှီအိၣ်တၢ်အလီၢ်လီၤ. ပစးထီၣ်လဲၤ တၢ်လၢခီၣ်ဒီတနံၤညါ တုၤလီၤလၢဟါခီဒီး ပတုၤတၢ်လီၢ်လၢပဆၢတုၤအလီၢ်လီၤ. ပအိၣ်ဘှံး တဘျးဖိဝံၤ ပလဲၤကွၢ်တၢ်လီၢ်တၢ် ကျဲန့ၣ် ပထံၣ်ဘၣ်ဆှီအလီၢ်အကျဲအါမး ဒီး ညၣ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အိၣ်အါမးလၢထံကျိဖဲန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲန့ၣ်တဘျီ ပဒိးလီၤပစၤ ( ပိုက်), ပဒိးလီၤစ့ၢ်ကီး ပထုလၢပလဲၤစိာ်အီၤ ဖဲထံကျိန့ၣ်အပူၤလီၤ. ဝံၤပဟဲက့ၤဖီအီၣ်မ့ၤ ဒီးဖီအီၣ်ညၣ်လၢပမၤန့ၢ်အီၤတဖၣ် ဖဲပအိၣ်က ဒုအလီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပမံဒီတနၤလၢပှၢ်ယိာ်ပူၤဝံၤ မုၢ်ဆ့ၣ်ထီၣ်ဂီၤခီ ပလဲၤကွၢ်က့ၤ ပစၤ ဒီးန့ၢ်ဘၣ်ညၣ်အါမးလီၤ. မ့မ့ၢ် ပထု န့ၣ် တန့ၢ်ဘၣ် ဆှီနီတဒုဘၣ်. သၢသီတသီ ဟါခီ ဖဲပကတီၤပသးလၢ ပကဖီအီၣ်တၢ်အီၣ်လၢဟါအီၣ်အခါ ပနၢ်ဟူ ပှၤလဲၤတၢ်လၢ သ့ၣ်လၣ်အူဃ့အကျါသီၣ် ဒီးယဆိကမိၣ်လၢ ကမ့ၢ်ထိးမံၤ မ့တမ့ၢ် ပပှၤကညီသုးဖိသ့ၣ်သ့ၣ်လီၤ. ယသုးဘူးထီၣ်ယသးဒီးကွၢ်စူၣ် ဃီၤတၢ်အခါ တၢ်သီၣ်ထီၣ်လၢပယီၤကျိာ် – မပြေးနဲ့ မပြေးနဲ့ – ဒီးဖဲန့ၣ်တဘျီဃီ ပယီၤသုးတဖၣ် ဟဲဃ့ၢ်စံၣ် ထူယၤ, တီၢ်ယၤ လၢအကျိဆါဆါကလဲာ်, စၢတံာ်ဃာ်ယၤလၢပျံၤ, ဝံၤ သံကွၢ်သံဒိးယၤလီၤ. ကျဲၤလီၤဆီလီၤအသုးသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်ဝံၤ အသုးသရၣ်တဂၤ န့ၣ်ဟဲဆူယအိၣ်ဒီးထိးယကိာ်ပူၤလၢအကျိခိၣ်ဒီးစံးဝဲ, ‘‘တနၤအံၤ နမ့ၢ်တစံးဆၢတၢ်ဂ့ၤဂ့ၤအဃိ, နခိၣ်နူာ်ကပြိထီၣ်အသး’’ လီၤ. ဒီးအဝဲစၢယစုဆူယလီၢ်ခံဃံးဃံး, စၢဃံးယခီၣ်ဖဲဝၣ်တခိၣ်အခီၣ်ထံးလီၤ. ဒီတနၤညါ ယမံတန့ၢ်မ့ၢ်လၢယစုအိၣ် လၢယလီၢ်ခံဒီး တၢ်ဆါယၤဒီတဂၤညါအဃိလီၤ. ယဘါထုကဖၣ်ဒီတနၤ, ယရူးလံာ်စီဆှံလၢယရူးအီၤဘၣ်တဖၣ်လီၤ. အကျါ ယရူးထါစံးထီၣ်ပ တြၢၤ ၂၃ ဒီတဆၢညါဒီးယသးမုာ်ထီၣ်က့ၤ ဒီးယပလၢၢ်ဘၣ် ဒ်သိး ယတတူၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်နီတမံၤလၢၤဘၣ်လီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ် ယမံတန့ၢ် ဒီတနၤလီၤ. မုၢ်ဆ့ၣ်ထီၣ်ဒီးအဝဲသ့ၣ်ကတီၤထီၣ်အသးလၢကဟးထီၣ် ဒီးဟ့ၣ်အီၣ်ယၤမ့ၤလီၤ. ယအီၣ်တနုာ်ဘၣ်. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ယဘၣ် လဲၤတၢ်ဒီးအဝဲသ့ၣ်ဒီတနံၤညါလီၤ. ယလဲၤတၢ်န့ၢ်ဒံး မ့ၢ်လၢယွၤဟ့ၣ်ယၤတၢ်ဂံၢ်တၢ်ဘါခူသူၣ်လီၤ. ယစုလၢအဝဲသ့ၣ်စၢဃာ်ဝဲန့ၣ် ယသွံၣ်လဲၤတၢ်တန့ၢ်ဒီးညိးထီၣ်နးနးကလဲာ်လီၤ. ဒီတနံၤညါ လၢပတၢ်လဲၤအပူၤ ယဂုာ်ကျဲးစၢးပၠးလီၤယသးလၢ ဒီးအဝဲသ့ၣ်လၢ ယမ့ၢ်ဒၣ်ပှၤသဝီဖိတဂၤ ဒီးခီဖျိတၢ်ဃံးတၢ်စ့ၤအဃိ ယဟဲဖီၣ်အီၣ်ညၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲသ့ၣ်တဲလိာ်အသး, ‘‘အဝဲတဂၤ တမ့ၢ်ပှၤအအၢ ဘၣ်လီၤ.’’ တုၤလၢဟါခီတၢ်ခံးန့ၣ်အဝဲသ့ၣ်တုာ်မံကဒီး ဒီးစၢကဒီးယစုဆူယလီၢ်ခံဃံးဃံးလီၤ. ယဃ့ကညးအဝဲသ့ၣ်လၢ ‘‘တဘၣ် စၢဃံးဃံးတဂ့ၤ ဆါဒိၣ်မး’’ လီၤ. ဖဲန့ၣ် အဝဲသ့ၣ်စၢက့ၤဝဲတဃံးလၢၤဘၣ်. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ယစုန့ၣ်အိၣ်လၢအချၢဃံအဃိ ယဖံဘၣ်ခံခီ လိာ်ဆါဒိၣ်မးလီၤ. ယဘါထုကဖၣ် ဒီးယရူးထါစံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤ ၂၃ ကဒီးလီၤ. ယမၤတပှဲၤလၢၤဘၣ်. ယဆိကမိၣ်လၢ ယကမၢအဝဲ သ့ၣ်ခးသံကွံာ်ယၤလီၤ. သနာ်က့ ယတတဲထီၣ်ဖျဲးဒံးဘၣ်. မုၢ်ဆ့ၣ်ထီၣ်ပလဲၤကဒီးတၢ်ဒီနံၤလၢပှၢ်ပူၤ ဒီးအဝဲသ့ၣ်မံကဒီးလၢပှၢ်ပူၤ သၢနၤတနၤလီၤ. လွံၢ်နၤတနၤန့ၣ် ပဟဲက့ၤလီၤတုၤလၢသဝီပူၤ ဒီးအဝဲသ့ၣ်ဟ့ၣ်လီၤက့ၤယၤဆူ သဝီသးပှၢ်အစုပူၤလီၤ. ဒီးယပူၤဖျဲး ထီၣ်ကွံာ်လၢ တၢ်သံအကဒုအကစၢၢ်အကဆူးအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်လီၤဆီဘၣ်ယၤလၢ ဖဲပယီၤသုးတဖၣ် ထူယၤတီၢ်ယၤ, မၤဆါမၤ ပယွဲ ယၤအခါ ယတသ့ၣ်ညါ တၢ်ပျံၤဘၣ်. လီၤဂာ်ဒ်သိး တၢ်တဆါယၤစ့ၢ်ကီးလၢၤဘၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. အအံၤမ့ၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်အိၣ်ဒီးယၤ ဘူးဘူးတံၢ်တံၢ် ဖဲ တၢ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်နးမးအခါအံၤလီၤ. ယစံးဘျုးယွၤလၢယမ့ၢ်တလီၤအဲၣ်ဘၣ်ဆၣ်အအဲၣ်ဒံးယၤအဃိ န့ၣ်လီၤ.
စီၤဆၢအဲၣ်ထူဘီ
အဲၣ်ခရီန်, အိၣ်ဟါအိၣ်
တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
တဘျီလၢ်လၢ်ဖဲပထံၣ်ဒီးကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဘၣ်တၢ်မၤတရီတပါ, တၢ်မၤအၢမၤသီမၤပယွဲတၢ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, ပသ့ၣ်ညါလၢ မုၣ်ကီၤလံၢ် မၤဝဲလၢာ်ဂံၢ်လၢာ်ဘါ လၢကမၤက့ၣ်မၤကူဒီးမၤဟးဂီၤ ယွၤအတၢ်တ့သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လၢဂ့ၤဝဲန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲပှၤပိာ်မုၣ်ကီၤလံၢ်အခံ တဖၣ်ဆိကမိၣ်ဝဲလၢအဒိၣ်စိဒိၣ်ကမီၤလၢလၢပှဲၤပှဲၤ လၢစီၤဆၢအဲၣ်ထူဘီအလိၤသနာ်က့, တၢ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်တီတခီမ့ၢ်ဝဲ စီၤဆၢအဲၣ်ထူဘီ တအိၣ်ဝဲထဲတဂၤနီတဘျီ မ့ၢ်လၢယွၤအိၣ်ဒီးအီၤကိးဆၢကိးကတီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်ယွၤအတၢ်အိၣ်ဘူးဒီးအီၤ ဒီး အတၢ်စူၢ် တၢ်နာ်ကပြုၢ်ကပြီၤထီၣ်လၢတၢ်ခံးအဆၢကတီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. စီၤဆၢအဲၣ်ထူဘီ မ့ၢ်ပှၤမၤနၢၤတၢ်တဂၤ ဒ်အဝဲဟဲထွးထီၣ်လၢ တၢ်လဲၤ ခီဖျိလီၤပျံၤလီၤဖုးမၤဘၣ်ဒိဘၣ်ဆါအီၤ လၢတၢ်စူၢ်တၢ်နာ်လၢအဆူၣ်ထီၣ်အါန့ၢ်ဒံးလၢညါလီၤ. မုၣ်ကီၤလံၢ်ဃၣ်ဝဲသပှၢ်တၢၢ်လီၤ.
လၢနတၢ်နာ်အတၢ်လဲၤအပူၤန့ၣ်, တနံၤအံၤ နကမၤနၢၤမုၣ်ကီၤလံၢ်လၢတၢ်စံးဆၢလၢအဘၣ်ယွၤအသး ဒ်လဲၣ်.
နကပျဲယွၤလၢကဟံးန့ၢ်မူဒါလၢတၢ်ဒုးလၢနဘၣ်ဒုး လၢမုၣ်ကီၤလံၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်လၢအဒိၣ်စိဝဲ ဒ်လဲၣ်.
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်
ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဖဲနဖိအံၤကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဘၣ် တၢ်ဒုးဆူၣ် လၢ ဒုၣ်ဒါမုၣ်ကီၢ်လံၤအသုးမုၢ်အိၣ်ဒီးစုကဝဲၤဖးဒိၣ်တဖၣ်အခါ, ဒုးသ့ၣ်နီၣ်အီၤလၢ တၢ်ဒုးအံၤမ့ၢ်နတၢ်ဒုးဒီးနမၤနၢၤပာ်စၢၤအီၤဝံၤလံ န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲမုၣ်ကီၤလံၢ်လူၤအီၤလၢကဂုာ်ဟံးန့ၢ်အသးအခါ, ပျဲနသးစီဆှံ ဖုးသံနီၣ်အီၤလၢကသိးထီၣ်ယွၤအစုကဝဲၤခဲလၢာ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. မ်နဖိအံၤ နီတခီၣ်တလဲၤကပာ်ကွံာ် တၢ်သုးဘူးသးဆူနၤဘူးဘူးတံၢ်တံၢ်တဂ့ၤ. မ်နဖိအံၤကသန့ၤအသးလၢ နစိကမိၤလၢတၢ်ပြၢအီၤတန့ၢ် ဒီးဆၢထၢၣ် ဂၢၢ်ဂၢၢ်ကျၢၤကျၢၤလၢတၢ်နာ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. မ်အဝဲကဟံးဃာ်ဂၢၢ်ကျၢၤ နတၢ်အၢၣ်လီၤအီလီၤတဖၣ် ဒီး စံးလၢတၢ်နာ်န့ၢ်နၤအလၢအပှဲၤ, ‘‘ယတပျံၤတၢ်အၢဘၣ်. အဂ့ၢ်ဒ်အံၤနအိၣ်ဒီးယၤလီၤ.’’ လၢခရံာ်အမံၤ ယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
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Week 21
I FEAR NO EVIL, FOR YOU ARE WITH ME
Psalm 23:4 – “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” (WEB)
Starting in 1997, those of us from the Myeik-Dawei area faced invasion by the Burmese dictators. They seized the revolutionary headquarters and the district fell under their control. Burmese soldiers burned villages along the Tanintharyi River. The villagers had to flee, some into the deep jungle, some to the Thai-Burma border, some into other areas in Burma, and others to refugee camps. Some of my siblings fled to a refugee camp. My parents, other siblings, and I decided to stay in a Karen village under the Burmese government’s control. The country was in turmoil. Job opportunities and income were next to nothing. In hardship, I remembered someone telling me that the skin of a seal brings in good money. If you catch one seal, you’ll make 100,000 kyats. So, I asked my friend who knew the habitat of the seals to go and catch some seals. With excitement, we started a walking journey in the morning and we arrived at our destination in the evening. We took a little break and scouted the area. The place looked promising with many fish and signs of the seals’ habitation. After putting down the fishing nets and seal-capturing traps in the river, we cooked rice and the fish we caught in a shaded area. We slept in the deep jungle. In the morning when we checked our nets and traps, we found many fish, but no seals. On the third day, we heard footsteps on dry leaves. I thought the sound was made by a wild boar or Karen soldiers. When I went in the direction of the footsteps, a voice suddenly screamed at me, “Don’t run! Don’t run!” Immediately, the Burmese soldiers came running and started kicking and beating me. They tied me up and interrogated me. After they settled in the area, a lead soldier pointed the gun at me with the muzzle of the gun touching my mouth and said, “Tonight if you do not answer our questions well, your brain will scatter everywhere.” He then proceeded to tie my hands behind me in the tightest way possible. He also tied my feet to the bamboo bush. I couldn’t sleep all night because my hands were twisted and bent and my whole body was in agony. I prayed the whole night and recited the scriptures that I memorized. One was Psalm 23. Prayers and scriptures brought comfort to me and I started to feel as if I did not suffer anymore. But, I could not sleep the entire night. In the morning, they started to prepare to leave and gave me rice. I could not swallow it. But I had to travel with them the whole day. I believed I was still able to walk because God gave me strength. Because the rope they tied my hands tightly blocked the blood flow, my hands were swollen terribly. As we travelled, I tried my very best to convince them that I was just a simple villager, trying to fish and hunt because of scarcity. At night, they again tied my hands and feet tighter. I pleaded with them, “Please don’t tie me so tight. It really really hurts.” They lessened the tight grip of the ropes. Still, my hands were behind my back crushing my shoulder blades and adding more pain. I prayed and remembered Psalm 23 again. I couldn’t take it anymore and thought about asking them to shoot me dead. But I couldn’t say it. The morning came and we travelled again all day long and spent the third night in the jungle. On the fourth night, we arrived back in the village and they handed me to the elders of the village. I was delivered from the valley of the shadow of death. One strange thing was that I felt no fear while the Burmese soldiers beat, kicked, and tortured me. It also felt as if there was no more pain. This is because God was very close to me when the suffering got very tough. I am thankful to God for loving me, although I am not loveable.
Saw Hser Ehhtoo Baw
Akron, Ohio
REFLECT
Whenever we encounter abuse and torture, we know it is the work of the devil doing all that he can to distort and destroy what God created as good. While the followers of the devil thought they had total power and control over Saw Hser Ehhtoo Baw, the truth was Saw Hser Ehhtoo Baw was never alone because God was with him every moment. He felt God’s closeness and his faith shined during the darkest time. Saw Hser Ehhtoo Baw was victorious as he came out of a very frightening and painful ordeal with the faith stronger than ever before. The devil lost, period!
In your walk of faith, how can you defeat the devil today with a godly response?
How will you allow God to take over the battle in which the devil thinks he has total control?
PRAYER FOR THE READER
Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional journal. When Your children face a fierce battle with the big army of the devil surrounding them with the most powerful artillery, please remind Your children that the battle is Yours and You have already won it. When the devil goes after their souls, let Your Spirit awaken them to take up the armor of God! May they never neglect spending intimate time with you! May they rely on Your unrivaled power and stand firm in faith! May they claim Your promises and confidently say, “I fear no evil, for You are with me!” In Jesus’ Name, I pray. Amen.