ပှ့ၤက့ၤတၢ်ဆၢကတီၢ်ဒ်ပှၤကူၣ်တၢ်သ့အသိး ~Wisely Redeem the Time

အနွံ ၃၁

ပှ့ၤက့ၤတၢ်ဆၢကတီၢ်ဒ်ပှၤကူၣ်တၢ်သ့အသိး

အ့ဖ့းစူး ၅:၁၆ – ‘‘ပှ့ၤက့ၤအဆၢကတီၢ်တက့ၢ်. အဂ့ၢ်ဒ်အံၤမုၢ်နံၤတဖၣ်န့ၣ်မ့ၢ်အအၢအသီလီၤ.’’

ဖဲယနီၢ်ဆံးကတီၢ်, ယဒိၣ်ထီၣ်ဘၣ်လၢသဝီဆံးဆံးတဖျၢၣ်အပူၤ, ယထီၣ်ဘၣ်တီၤကၠိ, ယမၤလိဘၣ်အိၣ်ဘှံးနံၤတၢ်မၤလိ,  ယလိာ်ကွဲဘၣ်ဒီးတံၤသကိးတဖၣ် မ့ၢ်တၢ်လၢမၤမုာ်ယသးဒိၣ်မးလီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်တုၤယနၢ်ပၢၢ်ထီၣ်တၢ်န့ၣ် ယသ့ၣ်ညါလၢ ထံကီၢ်တၢ်အိၣ်သးတဘၣ်လိာ်ဘၣ်စးသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အါထီၣ်, တၢ်ဒုးတၢ်ယၤအါထီၣ်ဆူၣ်ထီၣ်, ပသဝီဘၣ်သုးအသးဝဲလၢတၢ်လီၢ် တတီၤဘၣ်တတီၤအဃိ ကဲထီၣ်မးတၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲလၢပဝဲဒူသဝီဖိတဖၣ်အဂီၢ်အါမးန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲတၢ်ဘံဘုအဆၢကတီၢ် ယပၢ် ဘၣ်တၢ်ဖီၣ်အီၤလၢပယီၤသုးမီၤစိရိၤဒီး ဘၣ်လဲၤအိၣ်ဝဲလၢတီအူအဃိာ်ပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဒီးဘၣ်အိၣ်ဝဲဒၣ်သၢနံၣ်လီၤ. တချုးလၢ ယပၢ်အိၣ်ဝဲသၢနံၣ်ပှဲၤထီၣ်ဒံးဘၣ်န့ၣ်, ယမိၢ်ဒီးယဝဲၢ်ပိာ်ခွါခံဂၤဘၣ်တၢ်ဖီၣ်အီၤကဒီးအီၤလၢပယီၤသုးမီၤစိရိၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဆၢကတီၢ် ဖဲန့ၣ် လၢဟံၣ်ပူၤပှၤလၢအမၤတၢ်သ့ဒီးပှၤအဒိၣ်တဖၣ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ဖီၣ်အီၤလၢာ်လံ. အိၣ်တ့ၢ်ဒၣ်ထဲဖိသၣ်လၢဟံၣ်တဖျၢၣ်အပူၤလီၤ. ဒီပုၢ်ဝဲၢ်ပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိသ့ၣ်ဧၢ, ဆိကမိၣ်သကိးတၢ်ကမၤအသးဒီးအဝဲသ့ၣ်ဆူညါဒ်လဲၣ်.

ဖဲယသးအိၣ်အနံၣ်တဆံဘျဲၣ်အကတီၢ်, မ့ၢ်လၢယပၢ်အဃိ ယဟဲအိၣ်ဘၣ်လၢဘၣ်ကီဘၣ်ခဲဒဲကဝီၤပူၤ, ရ့လိာ်ဘၣ်သးဒီး တံၤသကိးအသီ, ထီၣ်ဘၣ်ကဒါက့ၤကၠိအသီတဘျီ ဒ်သးစၢ်ဒိၣ်ထီၣ်သီကတီၢ်အသိးမုာ်ဒိၣ်မးလီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ပအိၣ်ဘၣ်လၢ ကရၢၢ်ပူၤ, ပဟးထီၣ်တၢ်ချၢတသ့ဘၣ်. မ့ၢ်လၢပတအိၣ်ဒီးပလံာ်ပလဲၢ်, တၢ်အုၣ်ကီၤသးလီၢ်တံၢ်လီၤဆဲးအဃိန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပဘၣ်တၢ်ကွၢ်တလီၤပှၤ, တၢ်ထံၣ်အံၣ်ဆံးပှၤနာ်သက့ ပသးတဟးဂီၤဘၣ်. ကီခဲလၢတၢ်အိၣ်သးအကပၤကပၤဘၣ်ဆၣ် ယွၤကတဲာ်ကတီၤန့ၢ်ယၤလၢ ယကမၤလိန့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်လၢ တၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိတဖၣ်အံၤအပူၤဒ်သိးယကဒိၣ်ထီၣ်လၢတၢ်နာ် အါထီၣ်လၢတၢ်သန့ၤသးလၢယွၤအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.

လၢခံကတၢၢ်, မ့ၢ်လၢယွၤအတၢ်ဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤထူးတီၤအဃိ န့ၢ်ဘၣ်ခွဲးယာ်လၢသုးဃီၤကဒီးသးဆူထံကီၢ်သၢဘ့ၣ်တဘ့ၣ်လီၤ. ကွၢ်ကဒါက့ၤတၢ်အိၣ်မူတဖၣ်, တၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိတဖၣ်, ဒီးသ့ၣ်ညါဒီးနၢ်ပၢၢ်က့ၤယဲလီၤတံၢ်လီၤဆဲးလၢ ကစၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်ကတဲာ် ကတီၤန့ၣ် ပှၤဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ဖိတသ့ၣ်ညါဆိဘၣ်နီတဂၤဘၣ်. တကတီၢ်ဃီ တူၢ်လိာ်ယဲဒၣ်လၢ ကစၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်ဆၢကတီၢ်န့ၣ်တဆိ ဘၣ်, တစဲၤခံဘၣ်. ခဲလၢာ်ခဲဆ့ဘၣ်လိာ်ဘၣ်စး ဘၣ်ဆၢဘၣ်ကတီၢ်ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်ဆၢကတီၢ်လၢ ယယၢၤထီၣ်သၢကတီၢ်အံၤ, ဒ်ယၤအသိး ပှၤတနီၤနီၤကလဲၤခီဖျိဘၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီးန့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢတၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အံၤအဖီခိၣ် ယကွၢ်ကဒါက့ၤဝးဝးန့ၣ် တူၢ်လိာ်ယဲလၢ ယွၤစိာ်ဆှၢခီဖျိယတၢ်အိၣ်မူ, ယွၤဒီသဒၢယၤ, မၤပူၤမၤဖျဲးယၤလၢတၢ်တမုာ်တလၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အမဲာ်ညါ, ထီၣ်ဘၣ်ယဲကၠိဖးဒိၣ် တဖျၢၣ်လၢ ပှၤဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ဖိစံးဝဲ (ဘ၀တက္ကသိုလ်ကျောင်း) ဒီး လဲၤခီဖျိသးသမူသ့လၢယွၤအတၢ်သးကညီၤအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.

လၢနသးသမူအတၢ်လဲၤခီဖျိအခဲအံၤအပူၤ, ဘၣ်တဘၣ် နကပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်လၢ ပှၤလၢနအဲၣ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ထုးဖးကွံာ်လၢနၤ ဒီးနဘၣ်တၢ်ပာ်တ့ၢ်နၤဒ်ဖိၣ်ဃဲ, နဘၣ်တၢ်တနၢ်ပၢၢ်နၤဒီးသးဟ့နၤ, နဘၣ်တၢ်ဃုကူၣ်အၢကူၣ်သီနၤ, နဘၣ်တၢ်ဆူးတၢ်ဆါအနး, နဘၣ်တၢ်ဖှီၣ်တၢ်ယာ်တၢ်ဃံးတၢ်စ့ၤ, နဖိတဖၣ်တပိာ်ကျဲ, … ကမ့ၢ်ဝဲတၢ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်အကီအခဲ ဂၤမံၤဂၤမၠိန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်သ့ၣ်တ ဖၣ်အံၤတမ့ၢ်တၢ်ဘၣ်ယွၤအသးဘၣ်. တၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အံၤမ့ၢ်တၢ်ဒဲးဘးအဘူးအလဲတဖၣ်လီၤ. အမ့တမ့ၢ်ပတၢ်ဒဲးဘးသနာ်က့ ပှၤအဂၤအတၢ်ဒဲးဘးအဘူးအလဲအိၣ်ဝဲဒီး အါစုအါဘျီပှၤလၢအတၢ်ဒဲးဘးတအိၣ်ဘၣ်ဟ့ၣ်အပှ့ၤစ့ၢ်ကီးလီၤ. ဖဲပဘၣ်ဟ့ၣ် တၢ်အဘူးအလဲအါဒီးဆါမးအခါ, မ်ပကသ့ၣ်နီၣ် ခရံာ်လၢအဟ့ၣ်တ့ၢ်ပတၢ်ဒဲးဘးအဘူးအလဲ ဒီး ကွၢ်လိအီၤ, ပိာ်အကျဲ, ဒီး တူၢ်တၢ်လၢအဂံၢ်အဘါန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. တၢ်နးတၢ်ဖှီၣ်တခါလၢ်လၢ် ဟ့ၣ်ထီၣ်တၢ်ခွဲးတၢ်ယာ်လၢပကမၤဆၢတၢ် လၢတၢ်ဂ့ၤဒီးထီဒါ တၢ်ခံးတၢ်နၤအစိကမီၤတဖၣ်လီၤ. မ့ၢ်လၢမုၢ်နံၤမုၢ်သီတဖၣ်အၢသီအဃိ, ပအိၣ်ဒီးဆၢကတီၢ်ခွဲးယာ်လၢပကဟဲစိာ်ထီၣ်တၢ်ကပီၤ ဆူ ဟီၣ်ခိၣ် ဒ်ရံာ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်ကပီၤလၢပဂီၢ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. မ့ၢ်လၢယွၤအဘျုးအဖှိၣ်အဃိ, ဆၢကတီၢ်ခဲအံၤယတသံဒံးဘၣ်. ယွၤပာ်မူယၤ ဒီးသူဒံးယၤ လၢအဘီအမုၢ်အတၢ်မၤ, တၢ်ပီးတၢ်လီဆံးဆံးတခါဒံးအဃိ လၢသးဒီဖျၢၣ်ယစံးယဲ မ်ယွၤအမံၤဘၣ်တၢ်လၤကပီၤ အစိၤစိၤအဃၣ်ဃၣ်တက့ၢ်. 

သရၣ်ဆၣ်အိၣ်ဖျါ
ကြံစ်ဘိၣ်ရိၣ်, နီးသ်ခဲၣ်ရိၣ်လါနၢ်ကီၢ်စဲၣ်

တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ

တၢ်ပှ့ၤက့ၤတၢ်ဆၢကတီၢ်ဒ်ပှၤကူၣ်တၢ်သ့အသိး မ့ၢ်ဝဲတၢ်ခီဆၢတၢ်အၢလၢတၢ်ဂ့ၤ လၢတၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ကွၢ်ထံကူၣ်ထီၣ်ဖးလီၤတၢ် ထံထံဆးဆးန့ၣ်လီၤ. အအံၤအိၣ်ဒီးအစိကမီၤလၢကဆီတလဲကွံာ်မုၢ်နံၤမုၢ်သီတဖၣ်လၢအအၢဆူ မုၢ်နံၤမုၢ်သီတဖၣ်လၢ အလၤ ကပီၤအိၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပှၤတၢ်မၢဖိ စီၤပီလူး ပှ့ၤက့ၤတၢ်ဆၢကတီၢ်ဒ်ပှၤကူၣ်သ့အသိး ဖဲအဝဲစံး, ‘‘အဂ့ၢ်ဒ်အံၤ, လၢယဂီၢ်, ယမူန့ၣ်မ့ၢ်ခရံာ်, ဒီးယသံန့ၣ် မ့ၢ်တၢ်ဘျုးလီၤ.’’ (ဖံလံးပံၤ ၁:၂၁). စီၤပီလူးသ့ၣ်ညါလၢအတၢ်ဆၢကတီၢ်လၢ ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်လိၤအံၤတအိၣ်အါအါလၢၤဘၣ်အဃိ, အဝဲအဲၣ်ဒိးဒုးကဲထီၣ်ကိးဆၢကိးကတီၢ်လၢခရံာ်အဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.

မ့ၢ်တၢ်ဆၢကတီၢ် လီၤမၢ်ကွံာ် မ့တမ့ၢ် ဆှုကွံာ်လၢာ်ဂီၤကွံာ်လၢနဂီၢ်လၢတၢ်ခီဆၢက့ၤတၢ်အၢလၢတၢ်ဂ့ၤ လၢကျဲမနုၤတဖၣ်လဲၣ်. 
တၢ်ခွဲးတၢ်ယာ်မနုၤတခါအိၣ်လၢနဂီၢ်လၢနကပှ့ၤက့ၤတၢ်ဆၢကတီၢ်ဒ်ပှၤကူၣ်သ့အသိးလဲၣ်. 
မၤပှဲၤက့ၤလံာ်ကျိၤအံၤတက့ၢ်. ‘‘လၢယဂီၢ်, ယမူန့ၣ်မ့ၢ် ________________________________________.’’

တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်

ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤ န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ကစၢ်ဧၢ, ‘‘နဲၣ်လိပှၤဒ်သိးပကဂံၢ်ပမုၢ်နံၤတဖၣ်ဒီး ပကန့ၢ်ဘၣ်သး လၢအကူၣ်တၢ်သ့န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.’’ (စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤ ၉၀:၁၂). ဒ်ပခိးကွၢ်လၢ်နတၢ် အုၣ်က့ၤခီၣ်က့ၤ ကလၢထီၣ်ပှဲၤထီၣ်အဆၢကတီၢ်အသိး, မၤစၢၤပှၤလၢ ပကဟံးန့ၢ်တၢ်ခွဲးတၢ်ယာ်ကိးခါ လၢပကခီဆၢတၢ်အၢလၢတၢ်ဂ့ၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. နဖိအံၤလိၣ်ဘၣ် နတၢ်ဂံၢ်တၢ်ဘါ ဒီး နတၢ်သူၣ်ဒူသးဒူ လၢကမၤဝဲ တၢ်လၢ အဘၣ်, တၢ်လၢကဆှီ, ဒီးတၢ်လၢအဂ့ၤ လၢနမဲာ်ချံအတၢ်ထံၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယအဲၣ်ဒိးထံၣ်ဘၣ်နစိနကမီၤမၤတၢ်လၢနဖိအံၤ အသးသမူ ဒီးကမၢကမၣ်ယဲလီၤ. စံးဘျုးနၤလၢတၢ်ခွဲးတၢ်ယာ်ဖးဒိၣ်တမံၤလၢ အမ့ၢ် တၢ်သ့ၣ်ညါဘၣ်နၤ ဒီး တၢ်ကိးဘၣ်နၤလၢပၢ်သးဘိန့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤ ယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Week 31

WISELY REDEEM THE TIME

Ephesians 5:16 – “Therefore watch carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” (WEB)

As a child growing up in a small village, I went to school, attended Sunday School, and played with my friends. It was a wonderful time. But, once I got a little older and began to understand what was going on, I knew we lived in a very unstable world with conflicts and wars increasing and worsening. It was too hard for us, the villagers, to move again and again to get out of harm’s way. Then the nightmare came true. My father was arrested by the Burmese soldiers and was put in prison for three years in Taung Goo. Before my father’s time in prison for three years was up, the Burmese soldiers also arrested my mother and two brothers. There were no adults home. Only children were left at home. Dear readers, you can let your imagination take you to what it was like to be a child without having adult caretakers. 

After I turned 10 years old, we moved and stayed in a refugee camp. I found new friends and went to school. It was a wonderful time again. But, we were in a barbed-wired confinement and could not go out. We did not have proper documentation. We were looked down upon and treated with contempt. But we did not lose heart. Although difficulties surrounded us, God prepared a way for me to learn from my experiences to grow in faith and dependence upon Him.

Eventually we got resettled in the third country. Reflecting on my life experiences, we did not know what God prepared for us. No one knew! At the same time, I accept God’s timing, which is never early nor late. Everything is fine at the right time. Looking at the past through the wide lens I have now, I can see how God delivered me and protected my life in inconceivable ways. I also got to go to the “University of Life” as some would call it by God’s mercy. 

Right now, maybe you feel like an orphan as your loved ones are taken away from you, maybe you feel misunderstood and hated, maybe someone is plotting evil against you, maybe you are suffering from serious illnesses, maybe you are broke, maybe your children are rebellious. I don’t know exactly what you are going through, but I know each of us has our own burden. These sufferings are not God’s will. They are the consequences of sin. Even if it is not our own sin, someone else’s sin has consequences and it is far too common that innocent people have to pay for someone else’s sin. When these wages are too high and the pain is too unbearable, let us remember the God Who paid for our sins with His life. Let us learn from His life, follow His way, and endure in His strength! Every suffering presents us with the opportunity to wisely redeem the time by responding with good and rising up against the power of the darkness. Because the days are evil, we must use the time and the privilege to bring light to this world, as Jesus is the light of the world. By God’s grace, I am still alive at this time. God keeps me alive and uses me for His Kingdom as a tool. With everything that I am, I say, “May God’s Name be glorified forever and ever!”

Pastor Hsar O Phla
Greensboro, North Carolina

REFLECT

To wisely redeem the time is to intentionally respond to what is evil with what is good.  It has the power of transforming an evil time into a glorious time. The Apostle Paul wisely redeemed the time when he said, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21). Paul knew his time on earth became shorter and thus, every moment he had left was to live for Christ.

In what ways are you losing or wasting time in terms of responding to evil with good?
What is one opportunity presenting itself for you to wisely redeem the time?
Please finish the sentence, “For me to live is________________________________________.”

PRAYER FOR THE READER

Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional journal. Lord, “Please teach us to count our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12). As we look forward to Your redeeming time, please help us to take every opportunity to respond to what is evil with what is good. Your children need Your strength and courage to do what is right, what is pure, and what is good in Your eyes. I want to marvel at seeing Your power working through Your children. Thank you for the privilege of knowing You and having You as  our loving Father. In Jesus’ Name, I pray. Amen.