အနွံ ၂၅
ကစၢ်ယ့ၣ်ၡူးခရံာ် အစု, အခီၣ် ဒီး အကလုၢ်
မးသဲ ၂၅:၄၀ – ‘‘ဒီးစီၤပၤကစံးဆၢတၢ်ဒီးစံးဘၣ်အီၤ, ယစံးဘၣ်တဲဘၣ်သုတီတီအံၤ, မ့ၢ်သုမၤပှၤအဆံးကတၢၢ်တဂၤ လၢယဒီပုၢ်ဝဲၢ်အကျါအံၤဒီး, မ့ၢ်သုမၤယၤလီၤ.’’
အပူၤကွံာ်စှၤနံၣ် စးထီၣ်ဖဲယကွၢ် တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ် ဒီး ယကဟုကယာ်ပှၤလၢတၢ်ဆါဟံၣ်ပူၤလၢသူၣ်ဂ့ၢ်သးကျိၤတခီ (chaplaincy) န့ၣ်, ယမၤလိဘၣ်တၢ်အါမးဘၣ်ဃးဒီး တၢ်ကွၢ်ပှၤကွၢ်သိဒီးတၢ်ကဟုကယာ်ပှၤဆူးပှၤဆါဒီးအဘူးတံၢ်တဖၣ်, ဒီးဒုးသ့ၣ်နီၣ်ယၤ လၢ ယကဘၣ်မ့ၢ် ကစၢ်ခရံာ် အစု, အခီၣ် ဒီး အကလုၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပှၤတဂၤဘၣ်တဂၤအိၣ်ဒီးအတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိလီၤလီၤဆီဆီတဖၣ် လၢ အဟ့ၣ်နီၤလီၤယၤ ဖဲအလဲၤခီဖျိဘၣ်ဝဲတၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲအဆၢကတီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယကျဲးစၢးယဲဒ်သိးအဝဲသ့ၣ် ကသ့ၣ်နီၣ်ဝဲ ယွၤအတၢ်အိၣ်ဒီးအီၤဖဲအဝဲသ့ၣ်အသးမူဆဲခိၣ်လီၤလာ်အခါန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယလဲၤသဃဲၤသကိးတၢ်ဒီးအဝဲသ့ၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တကးဒံးဘၣ်, တၢ်သဂၢၢ်လိာ်သးဒီးပှၤတဂၤဘၣ်တဂၤ တၤယၤလၢယကဘၣ်မၤဂ့ၤထီၣ်, ယိာ်ထီၣ် ယတၢ်သ့တၢ်ဘၣ်တဖၣ်လီၤ. ဒ် chaplain တဂၤအသိး ယန့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ခွဲးတၢ်ယာ်လၢ ယဟ့ၣ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ကဟုကယာ် လၢသးအတၢ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်ဒီးလၢသူၣ်ဂ့ၢ်သးကျိၤ ဆူပှၤဆါသ့ၣ်တဖၣ် လၢအဟဲလၢ တၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိလီၤဆီ, တၢ်ဆဲးတၢ်လၤလီၤဆီ, ကလုာ်ဒူၣ်လီၤဆီ, ဒီး တၢ်စူၢ်တၢ်နာ်လီၤဆီ, တအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ပာ်လီၤ ယတၢ်ထံၣ်တဖၣ်လၢအဝဲသ့ၣ်အလိၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.
တဘျီဖဲယမၤတၢ်ဖဲ UCSF တၢ်ဆါဟံၣ်အခါ, ယန့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ကစီၣ်လၢယကဘၣ်လဲၤထံၣ်ပှၤဆါတဂၤလၢ ဂ့ၢ်ဂီၢ်အူတၢ်ဆါဟံၣ် အလီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲယလဲၤနုာ်လီၤဆူပှၤဆါအဒၢးအပူၤန့ၣ် ပိာ်မုၣ်တဂၤ အသးအိၣ် ၃၀ဘျဲၣ်ဘျဲၣ် ယူာ်ထီၣ်အစုဆူယအိၣ်ဒ်သိးယက ဖီၣ်အစုန့ၣ်လီၤ. အစးထီၣ်ဟီၣ်ဝဲလၢအကလုၢ်ဖးဒိၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲအသးပှၢ်န့ၢ်ယၤတစဲးဖိဘၣ်ဆၣ်ဖျါအသးပှၢ်ဒိၣ်မးလီၤ. ယထံၣ်ဘၣ် လၢအစုဒုၣ်အလိၤ ထးဆဲးပာ်စၢၤအလီၢ်တဖၣ်, ညီးဖးဒိၣ်, အိၣ်ဒီးအဖံဒီးအသွံၣ်လီၤစီၤဝဲန့ၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲတဲယၤလၢ အမ့ၢ်ပှၤစဲထီ ကသံၣ်မူၤဘှီး, ပှၤဆါလီၤသး, ဒီး ပှၤအဟံၣ်အဃီတအိၣ်ဘၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲတဲဖျါလၢအဘၣ်တၢ်မၤတရီတပါအီၤ ဘၣ်တၢ်မၤပယွဲ အီၤ လၢပိာ်ခွါအါဂၤလၢကျဲတဖၣ်အဖီခိၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. အသံကွၢ်ယၤမ့ၢ်အကြၢးဝဲဒီးယွၤအတၢ်ပျၢ်ကွံာ်အတၢ်ကမၣ်ကစီဒီဧါ. ယဖီၣ် အစုဃံံးဃံး ဒီး ယကွၢ်လီၤဆူအမဲာ်ပူၤလိၤလိၤ ဒီး ယတဲအီၤလၢယကလုၢ်ကပုာ်လုး လၢယွၤအဘျုးအဖှိၣ်ဒီးအတၢ်သးကညီၤန့ၣ် မ့ၢ်လၢအဝဲအဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲအမဲာ်ထံလီၤ ဒီးစံးဝဲ, ‘‘အဝဲအံၤမ့ၢ်အဆိကတၢၢ်တဘျီလၢယသးသမူအပူၤ လၢပှၤကညီအတၢ် အိၣ်ဒီးယၤဒီးထိးဘၣ်ယၤအံၤ ဒုးပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်ယၤလၢယမ့ၢ်ယဲပှၤကညီန့ၣ်လီၤ.’’ ယဟီၣ်သကိးဒီးအီၤလၢအလီၢ်မံကပၤလီၤ. ယထံၣ် ဘၣ်ယဲကစၢ်ခရံာ်အမဲာ်လၢအဝဲအပူၤ, လၢအမ့ၢ်ပှၤအဆံးကတၢၢ်တဂၤလၢကစၢ်ခရံာ်ကတိၤအဂ့ၢ်, ပှၤတူၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်, န့ၣ်လီၤ. တဘျီလၢ်လၢ်ဖဲယသဂၢၢ်ဘၣ်ဒီးပှၤဆါဒ်သိးအီၤန့ၣ်, ယဒုးသ့ၣ်နီၣ်ထီၣ်က့ၤယသး လၢယတၢ်စူၢ်တၢ်နာ်တမ့ၢ်ထဲလၢသးဘၣ်, မ့ၢ်စ့ၢ်ကီး စုဒီးခီၣ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.
မးသဲ ၂၅:၃၀-၄၀ သိၣ်လိယၤလၢခရံာ်အနီၢ်ခိမၤတ့ၢ်တၢ်မနုၤတဖၣ်လၢဟီၣ်ခိၣ်လိၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ကစၢ်ခရံာ်အတၢ်ကတိၤဒိ ပာ်ဖျါထီၣ် တၢ်သးကညီၤအတၢ်မၤတဖၣ်လၢယကြၢးမၤထွဲကိးမုၢ်နံၤ ဒီး လၢယထံၣ်ဘၣ်ခရံာ်အမဲာ်လၢပှၤကိးဂၤအပူၤသ့န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဒ်ယမ့ၢ်ခရံာ် ဖိတဂၤအသိး, ယနာ်လၢယမၤလၢပှဲၤခရံာ်အတၢ်သိၣ်တၢ်သီတဖၣ် ခီဖျိယတၢ်အိၣ်သကိးဒီးပှၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယမၤလိဘၣ်တၢ်လၢ ယကဘၣ်လဲၤသကိးတၢ်ဒီးပှၤဖဲအဝဲသ့ၣ်အိၣ်တၢ်အလီၢ်, ကတိၤယွၤအကလုၢ်ကထါ, ဘါထုကဖၣ်လၢအဝဲသ့ၣ်အဂီၢ်, မၤမုာ် အသးလၢတၢ်ကတိၤမ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤတၢ်အိၣ်ဘှီၣ်မ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ, ဆၢထၢၣ်ဒီးအဝဲသ့ၣ်လၢတၢ်ကိၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤဒီးတၢ်ပျံၤအပူၤ, ဒီး ဝံစၢၤအတၢ်ယိးဃၢ တဖၣ်လၢခရံာ်အဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.
သရၣ်မုၣ်ကွံသ့ၣ်လၣ်စ့
မဲၣ်န်ထံကၣ်, ခဲၣ်လဖိနယါကီၢ်စဲၣ်
တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
တၢ်ဆါဟံၣ်တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်မုၣ်ကွံသ့ၣ်လၣ်စ့ သဂၢၢ်လိာ်ဘၣ်အသးလၢ ပိာ်မုၣ်လၢအသးလီခရံာ်အတၢ်ပျၢ်အတၢ်ကမၣ်လီၤ. အမ့ၢ်ဝဲပှၤ အဆံးကတၢၢ်တဂၤ ဒ်ခရံာ်ပာ်ဖျါဖဲ မးသဲ ၂၅ န့ၣ်လီၤ. အခီပညီတမ့ၢ်လၢအဝဲအလုၢ်အပှ့ၤစှၤန့ၢ်ပှၤအဂၤဘၣ်. မ့မ့ၢ်တခီ ပှၤကညီခဲလၢာ်အိၣ်ဒီးအလုၢ်အပှ့ၤမ့ၢ်လၢအဘၣ်တၢ်တ့လီၤအီၤလၢ ‘‘ယွၤအက့ၢ်အဂီၤ’’ အဃိန့ၣ်လီၤ. အါစုအါဘျီ ပသးပ့ၤနီၣ် လၢပှၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လၢအဟဲနုာ်လီၤဆူပတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်တဖၣ်အပူၤ မ့ၢ်ပှၤအဆံးကတၢၢ်တဖၣ်လၢကစၢ်ခရံာ်တဲဝဲ ဖဲ မးသဲ ၂၅ အပူၤ န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဘၣ်တဘၣ် အဝဲသ့ၣ်ကတူၢ်ဘၣ် တၢ်သူၣ်ကၢ်သးလီၤ, တၢ်ဟးဂူာ်ဟးဂီၤလၢအသးပူၤလီၤ. ဘၣ်တဘၣ် အဝဲသ့ၣ် ဆၢန့ၢ်ဘၣ် တၢ်အိၣ်ဒီးအဝဲသ့ၣ် ခီဖျိ စုအတၢ်ထိးအီၤ, တၢ်သူအသးလၢ တၢ်အဲၣ်အတၢ်မၤစၢၤ တအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်စံၣ်ညီၣ်, တၢ်မိၣ်န့ၢ်နၢ်ဟူဘၣ် တၢ်ကတိၤလၢအမၤမုာ်အသးခီဖျိပကလုၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပကဘၣ် မ့ၢ်ကစၢ်ခရံာ်အစုဒီးအခီၣ်တဖၣ်, ဒီး ပကဘၣ်အိၣ်ဒီးသးလၢအသူၣ်အိၣ်သးအိၣ် ‘ပှၤအဆံးကတၢၢ်’ တဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.
မ့ၢ်ပကဲခရံာ် အစု, အခီၣ်, အကလုၢ်လၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူကိးနံၤဒဲးကသ့ဒ်လဲၣ်. တၢ်မနုၤတြီဆၢနၤလၢနကကဲခရံာ်အပှၤခၢၣ်စးလဲၣ်.
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်
ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ယဃ့ထုကဖၣ်လၢ အဝဲသ့ၣ်ကမ့ၢ်ဝဲ ခရံာ် အစု, အခီၣ်, အကလုၢ် န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ယွၤဧၢ, ဒုးသ့ၣ်နီၣ်အဝဲသ့ၣ်လၢ ကမ့ၢ်ဝဲမဲာ်ချံတဖၣ်ကွၢ်လီၤဟီၣ်ခိၣ် အံၤလၢတၢ်သူၣ်ကညီၤသးကညီၤ, ခီၣ်တဖၣ်လၢအလဲၤတၢ်လၢကမၤတၢ်ဂ့ၤ, စုတဖၣ်အဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤတၢ်, ဒီး ကလုၢ်တဖၣ်လၢဟဲစိာ်တၢ်ကတိၤမၤမုာ်ပှၤသး ဆူပှၤလၢအဃၢၤတဖၣ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. မၤစၢၤဖိအံၤလၢ ကပာ်သူၣ်ပာ်သးလၢယွၤ အတၢ်သးကညီလၢအအိၣ်လၢ ပှၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လၢအသဂၢၢ်ဘၣ်ဝဲကိးမုၤနံၤအလိၤ, – ဖဲလဲၤပှ့ၤတၢ်လၢတၢ်အီၣ်တၢ်အီအကျး, ဖဲအိၣ်ခိးဝဲဘၢးစ်အခါ, ဖဲဆှုၣ်တၢ်အခါ, ဖဲဖးလံာ်အခါ, ဖဲလဲၤဆူ တၢ်ဘါယွၤသရိာ်အခါ, ဖဲဟးလၢကျဲအခါန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. မၤစၢၤနဖိလၢ ကဃုဝဲကျဲလၢ အကသူဝဲအစု, အခီၣ်, ဒီး အနီၢ်ခိကိးဂၤ ဒ်သိးကပာ်ဖျါထီၣ် ယွၤအတၢ်အဲၣ် တၢ်သးကညီၤဆူပှၤကိးဂၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤ ယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Week 25
THE HANDS, FEET AND VOICE OF JESUS
Matthew 25:40 – “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (NIV)
I have been learning a great deal about my pastoral role as chaplain and minister for the past few years since I started chaplaincy and pastoring. I am daily reminded to be the hands, feet and voice of Jesus. Every person has a unique story to share with me while they are going through the most vulnerable moments in their lives. I seek to be a visible and tangible reminder of God’s presence at times when their whole world has been turned upside down. I journey with them hand-in-hand by providing my presence. Additionally, each encounter with people challenged me to deepen my ministerial, pastoral and chaplaincy skills that I would not get at any other place. As a hospital chaplain, I have the privilege of providing emotional and spiritual care to patients who have come from different backgrounds, cultural and ethnic differences, different faith traditions, and social conditions without imposing my own perspectives.
When I was during my on-call shift, I was paged to see a patient at the Emergency Department. Upon entering the room, a woman in her 30’s held out her hand for me to hold. She started crying out loud. This woman, who was a little bit older than me, looked very old. I could see the needle puncture marks or wounds everywhere on both of her arms. Her right arm was swollen, with pus and blood dripping from her arm. She said that she was a drug addict, a prostitute, and a homeless person. She told me how she was raped and abused by so many men on the streets. She asked me whether she was worthy of God’s forgiveness. While holding her hands tightly and looking into eyes, I replied with a soft voice that God’s grace and mercy are just for her. She broke down in tears and said, “It’s the first time in my life I felt human by the presence and touch of a human.” I cried with her at her bedside. It was indeed the face of Jesus Christ that could be seen in her, who is one of the least that Jesus describes – suffering people. Every time I met patients like her, I reminded myself that my faith is not only of the mind and of the heart but is also for the hands and feet.
Matthew 25:30-40 has taught me to get a glimpse of what Jesus’ body does here on earth. Jesus’ parable describes acts of mercy I should do every day and reminds me that I would encounter the face of Jesus in everyone I meet. As a Christian, I believe that I fulfill the law of Jesus Christ by being present with people. I’ve learned to come alongside with people where they are, speak the Word of God to them, pray for/with them, comfort them with words and without words, stand with them in the midst of anxiety and fear, and bear their burdens for the sake of Jesus.
Pastor Kwee Thay Lar Say
Manteca, California
REFLECT
Chaplain Kwee Thay Lar Say encountered a woman who longed for Jesus’ forgiveness. She is one of the “least of these” that Jesus mentions in Matthew 25. “Least of these” does not mean that some humans are less valuable than others. On the contrary, all human beings have the same inherent worth and value because all humans are made in “in the image of God.” We tend to forget that people who come into our lives and our church’s doors are the least of these that Jesus mentions in Matthew 25. They may have unspeakable brokenness inside of them. They may be hungry for our ministerial presence through the touch of our hands, thirsty for our loving support without judging them, and longing to hear comforting words through our voice. We must be the hands and feet of Jesus, but also have His heart for the ‘least of these.’
How can you be the hands, feet and voice of Jesus in your daily lives? What prevents you from being a representative of Christ?
PRAYER FOR THE READER
Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional journal. Help your children to be the hands, feet and voice of Jesus. Lord, remind them that they are the eyes with which they reflect compassion on this earth, the feet with which they walk to do good, the hands with which they bless all the world, and the voice with which they bring words of comfort to those around them. Please help your children to be much more aware of God’s compassion toward people they meet every day – in line at the grocery store, waiting for the bus, doing laundry, reading a book, going to church or simply passing someone in the street. Lord, please help your children to try to look for ways to use their hands, feet and whole body to show God’s love and mercy to everyone. In Jesus’ Name I pray. Amen.