အနွံ ၃၇
ဝံသးစူၤပျၢ်ယပှၤဂီၢ်မုၢ်
၂မိၤၡ့ ၅:၁ – ‘‘လၢခံက့ၤဒီး, စီၤမိၤၡ့ဒီးစီၤအၤဟရိၣ်လဲၤနုာ်ဒီးစံးဘၣ်ဖၤရိၤ, ယွၤပှၤအံၣ်စရ့လးဖိအကစၢ်စံးဒ်အံၤ, ပျၢ်ယပှၤဂီၢ်မုၢ်ဒ်သိးအကလဲၤမၤဘူၣ်တၢ်လၢယၤလၢပှၢ်လၢ်ကျါန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.’’
ဖဲ လါမးၡး ၂၇ သီ, ၂၀၂၁ နံၣ်န့ၣ်ယက့ၤတုၤဘၣ်လၢယနီၢ်ကစၢ်အထံအကီၢ်, ဖဲမုၢ်တြီၤကီၢ်ရ့ၢ်ဝဲၤလီၢ်ခိၣ်သ့ၣ်, ဒ့ၣ်ဘူးနိၣ်သဝီ, ဒ်သိး ယကထံၣ်လိာ်ယသးဒီးယပှၤကလုာ်ခိၣ်နၢ်, သုးမုၢ်သံၣ်ဘိဖၣ်, လၢယကဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအီၤ ဒ်ကျဲလၢယမၤသ့အသိး တမံၤမံၤအဂီၢ်န့ၣ် လီၤ. တုၤလီၤ ၃း၀၀ ဃၣ်ဃၣ်, ပထံၣ်ဘၣ်လၢကဘီယူၤလၢမူခိၣ်ဟဲယူၤဝ့ၤဝီၤခံဘ့ၣ်, ပှၤတနီၤကွၢ်ထီၣ်လၢတၢ်ကမၢကမၣ်အပူၤ, တနီၤ ဒိန့ၢ်ဝဲတၢ်ဂီၤ, တနီၤအိၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီးဒီးတၢ်သးဒ့ဒီ, ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ပှၤအါဂၤတပာ်သူၣ်ပာ်သးလၢအဂ့ၢ်ထဲန့ၣ်ဘၣ်. တၢ်ဆၢကတီၢ်တုၤဃီၤကဘၣ် ဖဲ ရး၀၀ ဃၣ်ဃၣ်, တၢ်ကလုၢ်ဖးဒိၣ်သီၣ်ထီၣ်တဘျီဃီ လၢမူခိၣ်ဒီးယသ့ၣ်ညါလၢအမ့ၢ်ကဘီယူၤအကလုၢ်လီၤ. ယၤဒီးယတံၤသကိး ပဃ့ၢ်ထီၣ်တဘျီဃီလီၤ. ဖဲန့ၣ်ကျိချံကျိသၣ်တဖၣ်ယူၤဝ့ၤဝီၤ, ပဒါလီၤပသးတခီခီ, ဃ့ၢ်တခီခီ, တုၤပတုၤလီၤပဝဲဆူတၢ်ပူၤလီၤ. တၢ်သး ဒ့ဒီလၢကျိချံကဟဲဘၣ်ပှၤဆံးယံာ်လဲၣ်, တဖျၢၣ်တဘၣ်ပှၤဘၣ်. ခံဖျၢၣ်တဖျၢၣ်တယံၤတဘူးဒီးပှၤ, ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်သထြုး တုၤဒၣ်လဲာ်ဟီၣ်ခိၣ် လီၤဆှူပှဲၤယလိၤဒီဂၤညါန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲန့ၣ်အကတီၢ်ယသ့ၣ်ညါဘၣ်လၢပှၤခဲလၢာ်မၤတၢ်တသ့နီတမံၤဘၣ်. အိၣ်တမံၤ ပဘါထုကဖၣ်လၢ တၢ်သးဒ့ဒီအပူၤ, မ့ၢ်ပမုၢ်နံၤကတုၤအိၣ်ပှၤခဲအံၤဧါ. တုၤကဘီယူၤဟဲခးလီၤတၢ်ခံဘျီဝံၤဒီးက့ၤက့ၤဝဲအဆၢကတီၢ်, သဝီပူၤတၢ်အိၣ်ဘှ့ၣ် လီၤ. ဖဲန့ၣ် ပတဲလိာ်ပသး, ပကဃ့ၢ်ပူၤဖျဲးပသးဆူသဝီချၢဆူကစၢၢ်ဒီခိၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲပခီဃီၤဆူပှၢ်ပူၤကတီၢ် ပထံၣ်ဘၣ်သဝီဖိ ပှၤမိၢ်ဖိဆံး, ပှၤမိၢ်ဒၢဒီးဖိသၣ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အိၣ်ခူသူၣ်လၢသ့ၣ်ခီၣ်ထံးလၢတၢ်ခံးကျါလၢအပှဲၤဒီးတၢ်ပျံၤတၢ်ဖုးန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖိဆံးတဂၤ မံဘၣ်အသးဒီးယနာ် လၢအဝဲတသ့ၣ်ညါတၢ်မၤအသးဒီးအီၤအံၤလၢတၢ်နီတမံၤဘၣ်. တုၤဖးဖီမုၢ်တနၣ်ရံၣ်ဃၣ်ဃၣ်, ကဘီယူၤဟဲကဒီး ခံဘ့ၣ်ဒီးတဘျီအံၤမ့ၢ် အကတၢၢ်တဘျီအဃိအဝဲသ့ၣ်တ့ၢ်လီၤဝဲကျိချံကျိသၣ်အါအါဂီၢ်ဂီၢ်လီၤ. ယဆိမိၣ်မ့ၢ်အမ့ၢ်တၢ်ဂီၤမူဧါ, တၢ်အနီၢ်ကီၢ်ဧါ. ဒီတနၤကျၢၤ တၢ်ခဲလၢာ်ကတၢၢ်ကွံာ်ဝဲ, လီၤဂာ်ဒ်တၢ်မံမီၢ်အအၢလၢတနၤအတီၢ်ပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. တုၤမုၢ်ဆ့ၣ်ထီၣ်ဒီး ယဟဲက့ၤနုာ်လၢသဝီပူၤ, ပတထံၣ်ပှၤ နီတဂၤဘၣ်. ပသကိးလၢအလီၤဖးဒီးပှၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အိၣ်ဖဲလဲၣ်, ပှၤသံပှၤပှၢ်, ဘၣ်ဒိအိၣ်ပှဲၤဂၤလဲၣ်, ဆိမိၣ်တဘူၣ်ဘၣ်. ဖဲန့ၣ်ပကတိၤတၢ် ဒီးပှၤဘၣ်မူဘၣ်ဒါတဂၤ, ပသံကွၢ်အီၤလၢအကါဖိတခိၣ်အံၤမ့ၢ်ဆှၢပှၤဆူဃိၣ်လိာ်ကျိအနံၤကသ့ဧါ. အဝဲရဲၣ်ကျဲၤန့ၢ်ပှၤဒီးပဒိးထီၣ်ကါဒီး ဟဲက့ၤလီၤ. ပှၤတနီၤကွၢ်ထွဲပခံ, တနီၤသံကွၢ်ပှၤသုကက့ၤလီၤဧါ, တနီၤသံကွၢ် ပှၤမ့ၢ်ဟဲက့ၤပိာ်ပခံကသ့ဧါ, ပစံးဆၢတသ့ဘၣ်. တုၤမ့ၢ် ပတုၤလီၤဆူဃိၣ်လိာ်ကျိအနံၤန့ၣ်ဒီး ပထံၣ်ဘၣ်လၢကမျၢၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်ဒိးထီၣ်ချံဒီးဃ့ၢ်ဃီၤဆူကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ်ထံကျိနံၤ, ဆ့ၣ်နီၤလၢသ့ၣ်ထူၣ် ခီၣ်ထံးအိၣ်ဝဲအါဂၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ခဲအံၤယဟဲက့ၤတုၤလံ. ယထံၣ်လိာ်သးဒီးပဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိ, တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်ဖိလီၤ. ပှၤကိးဂၤဘါထုကဖၣ်လၢယဂီၢ်, သးခုဝဲလၢယဟဲက့ၤတုၤအဃိလီၤ. ယကမၤဒ်လဲၣ်, ဒ်ယလဲၤခီဖျိဒီးတူၢ်ဘၣ်အသိး, ခဲအံၤယပှၤကလုာ်, မိၢ်ပၢ်, သူၣ်က့သးပှၢ်, ဖိသၣ် ဆံးသ့ၣ်တဖၣ် ဘၣ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်ဝဲမုၢ်နၤတအိၣ်ဘှံး, မုၢ်ဆါတအိၣ်ဘှံးဘၣ်. ယကမၤဒ်လဲၣ်, ယတမ့ၢ်တၢ်နီတမံၤဘၣ်. ခီဖျိယကျိလၢယက ခးလီၤတဲာ်ကဘီယူၤတအိၣ်ဘၣ်ဃိယမၤတၢ်တသ့နီတမံၤဘၣ်. မ့ၢ်တမ့ၢ်ခီဖျိ ယဃ့ၢ်ပူၤဖျဲးယသးဒီးပာ်လီၤတဲာ်ယပှၤကလုာ်အဃိ ယမ့ၢ် ပှၤလၢပျၤထီကွံာ်ယပှၤကလုာ်လၢထူၣ်စုညါအလိၤဧါ. ယတမ့ၢ်ပှၤနီတဂၤဘၣ်. ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်တနၢ်ဟူပကလုၢ်ခီဖျိပမ့ၢ်ပှၤအၢပှၤသီအဃိဧါ, ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ကွၢ်ပှၤခီဖျိပတလီၤဂာ်ဒီးပှၤကူပှၤကညီဘၣ်ဧါ, ပကလုၢ်တသီၣ်ဘၣ်ဒီးတၢ်တနၢ်ဟူအီၤဘၣ်ခီဖျိပမ့ၢ်တၢ်မံၤလာ်လၢအဘၣ်တၢ် လူၤခးပှၤဒီးဃ့ၢ်လၢပသးသမူအဂီၢ်ဧါ. ပတဘၣ်ဃးဒီးဟီၣ်ခိၣ်အတၢ်သိၣ်တၢ်သီနီတမံၤလၢကဒီသဒၢပှၤအဂီၢ်န့ၣ်ဧါ. ယကလုၢ်လၢယ အဲၣ်ဒိးနၢ်ဟူဘၣ်ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ဒီဖျၢၣ်လၢတၢ်မုာ်တၢ်ခုၣ်ဒီး, တၢ်တီတၢ်တြၢ်ကအိၣ်ထီၣ်က့ၤဒီးလၢပှၤကလုာ်ခဲလၢာ်လၢအအိၣ်လၢကီၢ်ပယီၤတ ဘ့ၣ်အပူၤဒ်အံၤလီၤ. (၁) ဘီမုၢ်စၢဖှိၣ်ကရၢအတၢ်ဘိးဘၣ်ရၤလီၤတၢ်သိၣ်တၢ်သီ (International Law, Universal Jurisdiction). လၢကလုာ်ဒူၣ်လၢကီၢ်ပယီၤအပူၤခဲလၢာ်အခၢၣ်စးယအဲၣ်ဒီးတဲဘၣ်သုဝဲ ကိးဂၤလၢသုကဟံးထီၣ်ဖီၣ်ထီၣ်တၢ်သိၣ်တၢ်သီလၢဘၣ် တၢ်ကွဲးလီၤအီၤဒီးအၢၣ်လီၤအီၤလၢပှၤဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ဖိခဲလၢာ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, ယဆၢမုၢ်လၢ်လၢတၢ်ကဟံးထီၣ်ဖီၣ်ထီၣ်အီၤတုၤလီၤတီၤလီၤလၢပှၤလၢ အကလုၢ်တသီၣ်ဒီးတူၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ဒ်အံၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. (၂) ထံရူၢ်ကီၢ်သဲးတၢ်လုၢ်တၢ်ပှ့ၤဒီးအတၢ်လိၣ်ဘၣ် (Political Aspiration). ပလိၣ်ဘၣ်ဒီးပအဲၣ်ဒိးသူၣ်ထီၣ်ပနီၢ်ကစၢ်ဒၣ်ပဝဲအထံရူၢ်ကီၢ်သဲးလၢအအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်တီတၢ်တြၢ်, တၢ်တီၤတုၤသိး, တၢ်သဘျ့ဒီး, ပှၤဂ့ၤဝီခွဲးယာ်အလၢအပှဲၤလၢပထံလီၢ်ပကီၢ်ပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. (၃) ပှၤကမျၢၢ်အတၢ်လိၣ်ဘၣ် (People’s Demands). ပှၤဂီၢ်မုၢ်ဒီးပှၤကမျၢၢ်ဆၢမိၣ်န့ၢ်သးလီဘၣ်တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါထီၣ်အသးဒ်အတၢ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်, ဆၢအိၣ်မူဒီးမၤဖျါထီၣ်အတၢ်ဆဲးတၢ်လၤအတၢ်စံၣ်စိၤ တဲစိၤဒ်သိးကမၤဃံမၤလၤဟီၣ်ခိၣ်အဂီၢ်လီၤ. ပှၤဂီၢ်မုၢ်လိၣ်ဘၣ်ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်အတၢ်သိၣ်တၢ်သီတဖၣ်လၢကဆၢထၢၣ်လၢအဝဲသ့ၣ် အတၢ် မ့ၢ်တၢ်တီအဂီၢ်ဒီးဒီသဒၢအဝဲသ့ၣ်အသးသမူလၢကပူၤဖျဲးဒီးတၢ်ဘၣ်ယိၣ်ဘၣ်ဘှီ, တၢ်မၤသံမၤဝီ, တၢ်ပျံၤတၢ်ဖုးသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.
“Please! Let My People Go!” ‘‘ဝံသးစူၤပျၢ်ယပှၤဂီၢ်မုၢ်’’
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ကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ်
တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
ပှၤကညီဖိတဖၣ်ဘၣ်လဲၤခီဖျိထံလီၢ်ကီၢ်ပူၤတၢ်ဒုးတၢ်ယၤလၢအယံာ်ကတၢၢ်ဒီးအိၣ်ဒံးအဖၢမုၢ် အါန့ၢ်အနံၣ် ၇၀ လံန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဒ်ပဝဲကညီဖိအါဂၤ အိၣ်ဘၣ်ဒီးတၢ်သဘျ့လၢထံကီၢ်သၢဘ့ၣ်တဘ့ၣ်အသိး, ပအိၣ်ဒီးမူဒါလၢပကလုၢ်ကသီၣ်ထီၣ်ဒီးထီဒါ တၢ်တတီတတြၢ်တဖၣ်လၢပပှၤကလုာ်အဂီၢ်ဒီးပှၤခဲလၢာ်အိၣ်လၢဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ချၢအလိၤအဂီၢ်လီၤ. အဲၣ်လံၣ်ဝံၣ်စၢၣ်လ်, ပှၤတူၢ်တ့ၢ်ဘၣ် တၢ်မၤသံမၤဝီ ဒီး ပှၤန့ၢ်ဘၣ်နိၣ်ဘၢၣ်တၢ်ဃူတၢ်ဖိးခိၣ်ဖး, စံးဝဲ ‘‘ထီဘိပကဘၣ်ဃုထၢပကအိၣ်ဖဲလဲၣ်တခီန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်အိၣ် ဘၢၣ်စၢၤမၤစၢၤပှၤလၢအဆီၣ်တံၢ်မၤနၢၤတၢ်လီၤ. တမၤစၢၤဝဲပှၤဘၣ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်နီတဘျီဘၣ်. တၢ်အိၣ်ဘှ့ၣ်အိၣ်ဘှီၣ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ် ဘါပှၤမၤနးမၤဖှီၣ်တၢ်လီၤ. တဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါပှၤဘၣ်နးဘၣ်ဖှီၣ်နီတဘျီဘၣ်. တၢ်လၢအထီဒါတၢ်အဲၣ်န့ၣ်တမ့ၢ်တၢ်သးဟ့ဘၣ်, အမ့ၢ်တၢ်တကနာ်ဃုာ်တၢ်လီၤ. တၢ်လၢအထီဒါဒွဲလၤကူၣ်သ့အဃံလၤန့ၣ်တမ့ၢ်တၢ်လာ်အၢဘၣ်. အမ့ၢ်တၢ်တကနာ်ဃုာ်တၢ်လီၤ. တၢ်လၢအထီဒါတၢ်စူၢ်တၢ်နာ်န့ၣ်တမ့ၢ်တၢ်နာ်ကမူၤကမၣ်တၢ်ဘၣ်. အမ့ၢ်တၢ်တကနာ်ဃုာ်တၢ်လီၤ. တၢ်လၢအထီဒါတၢ်မူန့ၣ်တမ့ၢ်တၢ်သံဘၣ်. အမ့ၢ်တၢ်တကနာ်ဃုာ်တၢ်လီၤ.’’
မ့ၢ်နအိၣ်လၢလဲၣ်တခီလဲၣ်. ပှၤနၢ်ဟူဘၣ်နကလုၢ်လၢကတိၤထီဒါတၢ်တတီတတြၢ်ကစီဒီဧါ. နကမၤမနုၤလဲၣ်.
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်
ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤန့ၣ်တ က့ၢ်. လၢအပူၤ တၢ်တအဲၣ်ဒိးကနၣ်ဃုာ်တၢ်မ့ၢ်အိၣ် ထဲတစဲးဖိဒၣ်လဲာ်, မၤဟးဂီၤကွံာ် ခဲလၢာ်, ဒီး ဟ့ၣ်အီၤလၢ နမဲာ်ချံ, နနၢ်, နစု, နခီၣ်, ဒီး နသးန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. မၤစၢၤပှၤ ဒ်သိးပကနၢ်ပၢၢ် တၢ်အဲၣ်ပပှၤကလုာ်အခီပညီတံၢ်နီၢ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. အအံၤတမ့ၢ်ထဲ ပကူသိးကညီကူကၤ, ပဂဲၤကလံၣ် ကညီတၢ်ဂဲၤကလံၣ်, ပသးဝံၣ် ကညီတၢ်သးဝံၣ် ဘၣ်. မ့ၢ်စ့ၢ်ကီးတၢ်မၤထွဲ တၢ်လၢ ကတိၤဒိ ၃၁:၈-၉ အတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်သဆၣ်ထီၣ်ပခံ န့ၣ်လီၤ, ‘‘အဲးထီၣ်နထးခိၣ်လၢ ပှၤတအုၣ်တဖၣ်အဂီၢ်, ဒီးလၢပှၤဖိၣ်ဃဲခဲလၢာ်အကွီၢ် အဂီၢ်တက့ၢ်. အဲးထီၣ်နထးခိၣ် စံၣ်ညီၣ်တၢ်တီတီလိၤလိၤ, ဒီးစံၣ်ညီၣ်တီပှၤဘၣ်နး ဘၣ်ဖှီၣ်ဒီး ပှၤဖှီၣ်ဖိယာ်ဖိန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.” ပစံးဘျုးနၤလၢနမ့ၢ် တၢ်အဲၣ်ကစၢ်, တၢ်တီတၢ်လိၤကစၢ်, ဒီး တၢ်ဃူတၢ်ဖိးကစၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤ ယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
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Week 37
PLEASE! LET MY PEOPLE GO!
Exodus 5:1 – “Afterward Moses and Aaron came, and said to Pharaoh, “This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.” (WEB)
On March 27, 2021, I went back to my country, Mu Traw District office in Day Poe Noe village, to meet and support our leaders and soldiers. Around 3 PM, I saw a plane flying overhead. Some looked up in awe, some took pictures, and some felt confused. But most did not think too much of it. Around 7 PM, I heard a loud voice in the sky and knew right away it was the sound of the plane. My friend and I started running. In the flying bombs, we ran and dove to the ground and ran again and dove until we reached the trench. We wondered when we would get hit. None hit us, but one exploded so close that the ground shook and it dumped chunks of dirt on us. I knew there was nothing I could do. We prayed in disbelief; is our time up? After dropping bombs for the second time, the plane left and the village was eerily silent. We decided to flee outside the village up to the mountain. When we went through the jungle we saw villages, mothers with babies, pregnant women, all hiding under the trees in the dark, full of fear. A young child was sleeping. I hope he didn’t know what was going on. Around midnight, two planes came back again and dumped as many bombs as possible as it was their last time that night. I thought to myself, “Is this a dream?” “Is this for real?” It felt like the end of everything that night. It was a horrible nightmare. In the morning, we came back to the village and saw no one. Where are our friends? How many died? How many got injured? We dared not wonder. We talked to a leader there and asked if he could drive us to the Salween River. When we were leaving, some were looking on and asking if we were leaving. Some asked if they could follow us, to which we had to reply they couldn’t. At the river bank, we saw people getting into the boat to flee to Thailand, and also many sitting under the trees. Now that I am home, I am with my family and church members. They prayed for me and were happy to see me. What am I going to do? My people, parents, elderly, and children continue to suffer day and night from what I went through. What am I going to do? I am nothing. I don’t have a gun that can shoot down planes. Does all of this mean I crucify my people because of the fact that I left them and fled for my life? I am nobody. Does the world not hear us because we are bad people? Does the world not think we are human beings? Are we chased like animals and prey for killing because no one hears us? Are we not protected under some kind of international laws? I want to hear peace and justice for all ethnic groups in Myanmar and my voice is this: (1) International Law (Universal Jurisdiction) – I urge the international community to follow the laws that have been agreed upon and ratified. I hope these laws will actually be enforced. (2) Political Aspiration – We want to determine our own political destiny with protection, equality, freedom, and human rights in our land. (3) People’s Demands – My people deserve to have their culture and history on display to show the beauty and diversity of the world. My people need an international law that stands for justice and protects their lives from anxiety, killing and fear.
PLEASE! LET MY PEOPLE GO!
Pastor Peacefully
Thailand
REFLECT
Karen people have been living through the longest ongoing civil war for more than 70 years. As many Karen enjoy freedom in countries where they are resettled, we have the responsibility to voice against injustice perpetrated against our people and all in the world.
Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel prize-winning peace activist, said, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
Whose side are you on? Can people hear your voice against injustice? What actions can you take?
PRAYER FOR THE READER
Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional journal. If there is any trace of indifference found in their hearts, please eradicate it and give them Your eyes, Your ears, Your hands, Your feet, and Your heart. Help us to understand what it truly means to help our people. It is not just wearing our costumes, dancing our dances, or singing our songs. It is also about doing what Proverbs 31:8-9 tells us to do, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Thank you for being the God of love, justice, and peace. In Jesus’ Name, I pray. Amen.