အနွံ ၄၅
သ့ၣ်ညါအါထီၣ်ဘၣ်ယွၤလၢတၢ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်ခီၣ်ဘၣ်အပူၤ
ဖံလံးပံၤ ၃:၈ – ‘‘အခိၣ်တလိာ် ယပာ်တၢ်ခဲလၢာ်လၢတၢ်မၤဟါမၢ်ယတၢ်လၢတၢ်ဂ့ၤဒၣ်တၢ်ဘၣ်ဃးဒီးတၢ်သ့ၣ်ညါ ယကစၢ်ယ့ၣ်ရှူးခရံာ်အဃိလီၤ.’’
ယန့ၢ်ဘၣ် ခိဘ့း-၁၉ တၢ်ဆါ ဖဲ လါယူၤလံ ၂၀, ၂၀၂၁ အဃိ ယဆၢတဲာ်လၢယကအိၣ်လီၤဖးယသး ဖဲ ယတၢ်မၤလီၢ်, ပယီၤ ယွၤဂ့ၢ်ပီညါလံာ်စီဆှံကၠိအဟံၣ်ဒွဲန့ၣ်လီၤ. (ဖဲန့ၣ်အခါ, တၢ်ခဲလၢာ်ခဲဆ့, ပၣ်ဃုာ်ဒီးကမျၢၢ်တၢ်ကူစါယါဘျါအတၢ်မၤတဖၣ်, အိၣ်ပ တုာ်ဝဲခီဖျိလၢထံကီၢ်တမုာ်အဃိလီၤ). တၢ်ဆၢတဲာ်လၢယကလဲၤအိၣ်လၢကၠိအဟံၣ်ဒွဲမ့ၢ်တၢ်ကီလၢယဂီၢ် မ့ၢ်လၢယကဘၣ်လဲၤ အိၣ်ဖဲန့ၣ်ထဲတဂၤဧိၤ ဒီးတၢ်အံၤမ့ၢ်ဝဲတၢ်ဘၣ်ယိၣ်ဘၣ်ဘီလၢပှၤဆါလၢ ခိဘ့း-၁၉ အဂီၢ်လၢပှၤကွၢ်ထွဲကဟုကယာ်အီၤတအိၣ် နီတဂၤဘၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. သနာ်က့ခီဖျိလၢယတအဲၣ်ဒိးလၢတၢ်ဆါကဘၣ်ကူဘၣ်ဂာ်ဆူယဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိအဃိ, ယမၤယဲတၢ်ဆၢတဲာ် အဝဲန့ၣ်လီၤ.
တဘျီဖဲဂီၤခီ ၃နၣ်ရံၣ်န့ၣ် ယအီးစံၣ်ကၠ့ၣ်လီၤ ဒီးယသါတန့ၢ်ဂ့ၤဂ့ၤဘၣ်. ယထိၣ်ကွၢ်ယအီးစံၣ်ကၠ့ၣ်ဒီးအိၣ်ဝဲလၢ ၈၀ အကပိာ်ကပၤ ဒီး အစှၤလီၤစှၤလီၤဝဲလီၤ. ယပျံၤတၢ်ဒီးသူၣ်ကိၢ်သးဂီၤယဲလီၤ. ယအိၣ်ဒၣ်ထဲတဂၤဧိၤလီၤ. ကၠိကရၢၢ်ဒီကရၢၢ်အိၣ်ဘှ့ၣ်အိၣ်ဘှီၣ်ဝဲ လီၤ. ယကျဲးစၢးမၤဂၢၢ်လီၤယသး ဝံၤယချီထီၣ်ထံချီလၢပှၤဖီမ့ၤတပၢၤလီၤ. ဖဲတကတီၢ်ဃီန့ၣ်, ယဘါထုကဖၣ်တထံၣ်ဃီ ဒီး ယတဲက့ၤလီၤယသး, ‘‘တဘၣ်ဟ့ၣ်အဃၣ်တဂ့ၤ, တဘၣ်ဟ့ၣ်အဃၣ်တဂ့ၤ.’’ ယသ့ၣ်ညါလၢယမ့ၢ်ဟ့ၣ်အဃၣ်အဃိ ယကထီၣ် ဘၣ်ဆူမူခိၣ်လီၤ. ယသါနုာ်ထံချီအသဝံ ဒီးယအီးစံၣ်ကၠ့ၣ်ဟဲက့ၤထီၣ်ကယီကယီလီၤ. ဘူးလၢယကသံလီၤ. အသီဖဲယအိၣ်လီၤဖး လၢပှၤဂၤအခါ, ယပျိၢ်ဆါဒိၣ်မးအဃိ ယအိၣ်လၢလီၢ်မံအပူၤကိးဆၢကိးကတီၢ်လီၤ. လၢလီၢ်မံပူၤဒၣ်လဲာ်, ယသုးယသးန့ၢ်ဒၣ်ဆံး ကိာ်ဖိ လီၤ. လၢတၢ်ဟးဆံၣ်ဟးအ့ၣ်အဂီၢ်, ယဘၣ်ပာ်လီၤ ပိာ်ခွါတၢ်ဟးဆံၣ်အခွးလၢလီၢ်ဆ့ၣ်နီၤဖီခိၣ်ဒီးဟးဆံၣ်, ဒီးမ့ၢ်လၢယမၤ က့ၣ်သကွံၤလီၤယနီၢ်ခိတန့ၢ်အဃိ, ယစုတတုၤလီၤလၢတၢ်ဖီလာ်လၢယကမၤကဆှဲကဆှီယသးဘၣ်. လီၤမဲာ်ဆှးဒိၣ်မးလီၤ. တၢ်တဘျီန့ၣ် ယတူၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ဆါဆဲးဖိးလၢယပျိၢ်အဖီလာ်တခီ ဒီးဆါနးနးကလဲာ်အဃိ ယကိးပသူထီၣ်, ‘‘ယွၤဧၢ, မၤပူၤဖျဲး ယၤတက့ၢ်.’’ လီၤလးဒိၣ်မးလၢတၢ်ဆါဆဲးဖိးယၤလီၤမၤကွံာ်တဘျီဃီလီၤ. မ့ၢ်, ဟါမၢ်ကွံာ်ဝဲလီၤ. ယွၤစံးဆၢယတၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လီၤ. ယပာ်ယဲလၢ တၢ်အံၤမ့ၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်အုၣ်ကီၤလၢယဂီၢ်လၢအဝဲအိၣ်ဒီးယၤထီဘိ ဒီး ယပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်လၢ ယတၢ်ဝံတၢ်ယိးဟဲဖှံထီၣ် ဒီး ယအိၣ်ဘံၣ်ဘၢအါထီၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.
အကတီၢ်ဖဲန့ၣ်အခါ, ပှၤအါဂၤ, ပၣ်ဃုာ်ဒီးယဘူးယတံၢ်ယသကိးတဖၣ် – သံလၢခိဘ့းတၢ်ဆါ ဒီး အမၤဘှံးမၤဘၣ်ဒိယသး ဒိၣ်မးလီၤ. တနံၤ, တၢ်သးအုးလုၢ်ဘၢယၤတုၤလၢယသးလီၤဘှံးလီၤဘှါဒီးယဟီၣ်ယဲလီၤ. သတူၢ်ကလာ်, ယနၢ်ဟူပှၤတဂၤအူ ဝဲလၢပံဘိ ထါသးဝံၣ် ‘‘အိၣ်မူလၢခရံာ်အဂီၢ်’’ အသီၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲယနၢ်ဟူထါသးဝံၣ်အခါ, ယသးခုၣ်လီၤမုာ်လီၤဝဲန့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢမဲာ် ထံမဲာ်နိအပူၤ, ယစံးဘျုးယွၤလၢအကတိၤတၢ်ဒီးယၤခီဖျိထါသးဝံၣ်, လၢအဒုးသ့ၣ်နီၣ်ယၤလၢတၢ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်တီ လၢအမ့ၢ် တၢ်အိၣ်မူ မ့ၢ်လၢခရံာ်အဂီၢ် ဒီၤ ခရံာ်မ့ၢ်လၢတၢ်အိၣ်မူအဂီၢ်လီၤ.
ခရံာ်မ့ၢ်ဝံၤအဃိ, စီၤပီလူးဘၣ်တၢ်ပာ်အီၤလၢပှၤအရ့ဒိၣ်ကတၢၢ်လၢခရံာ်ဖိအတၢ်စံၣ်စိၤတဲစိၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲစံး, ‘‘ယပာ်တၢ်ခဲလၢာ် လၢတၢ်မၤဟါမၢ်ယတၢ်လၢတၢ်ဂ့ၤဒၣ်တၢ်ဘၣ်ဃးဒီးတၢ်သ့ၣ်ညါ ယကစၢ်ယ့ၣ်ရှူးခရံာ် အဃိလီၤ.’’ (ဖံလံးပံၤ ၃:၈). စီၤပီလူးစံး လၢအတၢ်မၤနၢၤခဲလၢာ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, မ့ၢ်ဘၣ်ထိၣ်သတြီၤကွၢ်လၢတၢ်သ့ၣ်ညါယွၤအဃိ, အလုၢ်အပှ့ၤတအိၣ်ဘၣ်. လၢနီၢ်ခိတခီ ယပီၣ်လီၤ အါန့ၢ် အပီၣ် ၁၀ လၢခံနွံအတီၢ်ပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢနီၢ်သးတခီ, ယန့ၢ်ဘၣ်အါန့ၢ်အပီၣ် ၁၀လီၤ. ယပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်အဲၣ်, တၢ်ကဟုကယာ် ဟဲလၢယွၤအအိၣ်ဒီးပှၤအါဂၤအအိၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲယဆိကမိၣ်က့ၤတၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အံၤ, ကၢကီၣ်လၢယဂီၢ် လၢယလဲၤခီ ဖျိဘၣ်တၢ်နးတၢ်ဖှီၣ်အံၤ မ့ၢ်လၢယသ့ၣ်ညါအါထီၣ်ဘၣ်ယွၤ ဒီး ယပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်လၢယဘူးထီၣ်လၢယွၤအါထီၣ်လၢတၢ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်ခီၣ် ဘၣ်အပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.
သရၣ်ထူထူဝါ
ကီၢ်လါ
တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
ယွၤသးလီဝဲလၢပကသ့ၣ်ညါအီၤဘူးဘူးတံၢ်တံၢ်လီၤ. ဖဲပတၢ်အိၣ်မူလဲၤသးဘျ့ဘျ့ဆှီဆှီအခါ, အါစုအါဘျီပသးပ့ၤနီၣ်ယွၤလီၤ. သနာ်က့ သးသမူအကလံၤမုၢ်တဖၣ်ထုးပှၤဘူးထီၣ်ဆူယွၤအအိၣ်သ့န့ၣ်လီၤ. စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤ ၃၄:၁၈ စံး, ‘‘ယွၤအိၣ်ဘူးဒီးပှၤလၢ အသူၣ်ကၢ်သးလီၤ, ဒီးပှၤလၢအပီၢ်ယၢ်လီၤက့ၤအသးန့ၣ် အုၣ်က့ၤခီၣ်က့ၤဝဲလီၤ.’’ ဒီးကထၢၣ် သရၣ်ဒိၣ်ရ့းခ်ဝၢၤရဲၣ်န် စံးဝဲလၢ, ‘‘ဖဲနသးသ့ၣ်ဖးအခါ, ဖဲနပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်လၢပှၤညိကွံာ်နၤအခါ, ဖဲနတၢ်ဃုထၢတအိၣ်လၢၤအခါ, ဖဲတၢ်ဟဲဘၣ်ဒိဘၣ်ထံးနၤဆါဒိၣ်မး အခါ, ဒီး ဖဲနသုးဘူးနသးဆူထဲကစၢ်ယွၤတဂၤဧိၤအခါ — လၢတၢ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်ခီၣ်ဘၣ်ဒ်အံၤအကတီၢ်အပူၤန့ၣ်, ပမၤလိၤဘၣ် တၢ်ဃ့ထုကဖၣ်လၢ အမ့ၢ်အတီကတၢၢ်, လၢသးဒီဖျၢၣ်, ဒီး လၢကတိၤတၢ်ဒီးယွၤဖျိဖျိဖျါဖျါတီတီဆှဲဆှဲန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပဂံၢ်ပဘါတအိၣ်လၢပကဘါထုကဖၣ်ဒီၣ်ဒီၣ်ဖိဘၣ်.’’
ပကထံၣ်တၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲအကတီၢ်တဖၣ် လၢတၢ်မၤလိအလီၢ် လၢတၢ်ဒိၣ်ထီၣ်လၢနီၢ်သးအဂီၢ်ကသ့ဒ်လဲၣ်. ဒ်သိးပသုလီၤတဃံၤ လီၤတကုးလီၤကလဲ လၢတၢ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်ခီၣ်ဘၣ်အပူၤအဂီၢ် ပကထံၣ်တၢ်အိၣ်သး သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လၢတၢ်လီၤထူလီၤယိာ်အမဲာ်ချံ ကသ့ဒ်လဲၣ်. တၢ်သ့ၣ်ညါယွၤဟ့ၣ်နၤ တၢ်သ့တၢ်ဘၣ်, တၢ်ထူးတၢ်တီၤ, ဒီး တၢ်စိတၢ်ကမီၤ လၢကျဲမနုၤတဖၣ်လဲၣ်.
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်
ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဝံသးစူၤသိၣ်လိဘၣ်နဖိလၢကဃုနၤလၢတၢ်နးတၢ်ဖှီၣ်အပူၤ, မၤစၢၤအီၤလၢ ကပလၢၢ် ဘၣ်နတၢ်အိၣ်ဒီးအီၤ, ဒီး ဒီဒၣ်ဘၣ်အီၤလၢတၢ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်ခီၣ်ဘၣ်အပူၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဝံသးစူၤ ဟ့ၣ်လီၤဘၣ်အီၤတၢ်သူၣ်ဒူသးဒူ လၢတၢ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဘၣ်တဖၣ်လၢ အဟဲတၤအီၤတဖၣ်, တၢ်မုၢ်လၢ်လၢကသ့တူၢ်တၢ်ကန့ၢ်, ဒီး တၢ်ကူၣ်တၢ်ဆးလၢ ထီဘိ ကဃၣ်ဆူနအိၣ်လၢတၢ်အိၣ်သးတမံၤလၢ်လၢ်လၢအတၢ်အိၣ်မူအပူၤ, ဒ်သိး ကသ့ၣ်ညါဘၣ်နၤအါထီၣ် ဒီး ကအဲၣ်ဘၣ်နၤဒိၣ်ထီၣ်အဂီၢ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤ ယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
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Week 45
GETTING TO KNOW GOD BETTER AMIDST SUFFERING
Philippians 3:8 – “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost everything.” (NIV)
Having tested positive for COVID-19 on July 20, 2021, I decided to isolate myself at one dormitory of Myanmar Institute of Theology where I have been serving. At that time, due to the political situation, almost everything in the country stopped, including public health care services. The decision to go and stay at our school dormitory was hard for me because I would have to stay alone in a room. That’s risky for a COVID patient, but not wanting to infect my family members I went ahead with that decision.
One early morning, around 3 AM, my oxygen level dropped and I was not able to breathe well. I checked my oxygen level and it was around 80 and kept dropping. I panicked. I was there by myself. The whole campus was silent. I tried to remain calm and boiled a bowl of hot water with my rice cooker. Meanwhile, I kept praying to God and kept saying to myself, “Do not give up, do not give up” knowing that giving up means “going up.” Then I inhaled the vapor of the hot water and my oxygen level rose again gradually. It was a close call. During my self- isolation days, I got back pain. It was really painful. So I just stayed in bed most of the time. Even in bed, I had to inch around. For toilet affairs, I had to put my urinal on a chair and “do the business,” but as I was not able to bend my body, my hand could not reach the bottom for cleaning. How embarrassing! At one point, I felt a sharp pain in my lower back and it was so painful that I simply cried out aloud “Lord, save me,” I shouted in Burmese language. Amazingly, my back pain immediately disappeared. Yes, it simply disappeared. God answered my prayer. I took it as an assurance from God that He is always there for me and that really makes me feel more relieved and more secure.
During those days, so many people, including my relatives and good friends, died because of COVID. It really drained and pained my heart. One day, I was so overwhelmed by my sadness that I broke down and cried. Suddenly, I heard someone play the melody of the hymn “Living for Jesus” on a flute. Upon hearing that hymn, my mind became at peace. While crying, I thanked God for speaking to me again through this hymn, which reminds me of the truth that life is for Christ and Christ is for life.
Apostle Paul, who was regarded as the most important and influential person after Jesus Christ in the history of Christianity, said, “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost everything.” (Philippians 3: 8). Paul claims that all of his accomplishments are worthless compared with the greatness of knowing Christ. Physically, I lost more than 10 pounds in two weeks’ time. But spiritually, I gained much more than 10 pounds. I experienced the love and care of God and many other people. When I reflect on all these things, I can even say it was worth going through this entire ordeal, because I came to know God better and I am drawn closer to God amidst sufferings.
Thrah Htoo Htoo Wah
Myanmar
REFLECT
God desires human beings to know him intimately. When life sails smoothly, we tend to forget God. But the storms of life can draw us closer to God. Psalms 34:18 says, “The Lord is near to those who are discouraged; he saves those who have lost all hope.” Rick Warren says, “When your heart is broken, when you feel abandoned, when you are out of options, when the pain is great— and you turn to God alone. It is during suffering that we learn to pray our most authentic, heartfelt, honest-to-God prayers. When we are in pain, we do not have the energy for superficial prayers.” For a person, no other privilege is more rewarding and fulfilling than the privilege of knowing God.
How can we see circumstances as a training ground for spiritual growth? How can we view things from an eternal perspective so we will not stumble and crumble in the face of troubles and tribulations? In what ways does the knowledge of God equip you, enrich you, and empower you?
PRAYER FOR THE READER
Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional journal. Please teach your children to seek You in times of trouble, help them feel Your presence, and protect them amidst sufferings. Please grant them the courage to face all the challenges, hope to persevere, and wisdom to turn to You in every circumstance of life, so that they will come to know You better and better and love You more and more. In Jesus’ Name I pray. Amen.