အနွံ ၄၈
သန့ၤနသးလၢယွၤ, တဘၣ်သန့ၤနသးလၢနတၢ်ကူၣ်တၢ်ဆးဒၣ်နဲတဂ့ၤ
ကတိၤဒိ ၃:၅-၆ – ‘‘သန့ၤနသးလၢယွၤလၢနသးဒီဖျၢၣ်ညါတက့ၢ်. ဒီးသုတသန့ၤနသးလၢနတၢ်ကူၣ်တၢ်ဆးဒၣ်နဲတဂ့ၤ. သ့ၣ်ညါယွၤလၢနကျဲခဲလၢာ်အပူၤတက့ၢ်. ဒီးအဝဲဒၣ် ကမၤလိၤနကျဲလီၤ.’’
ယမ့ၢ်ဖိတဂၤလၢအဟဲဒိၣ်ထီၣ်ဘၣ်လၢ ပၢ်လၢအမ့ၢ်တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်ဒီးမိၢ်လၢအဲၣ်ယွၤ ဖဲဒူသဝီလၢအမ့ၢ်ပှၤကညီသဝီန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယမ့ၢ်စ့ၢ်ကီးဖိသဒါတဂၤ ဒီးမၤန့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်အဲၣ် တၢ်ကဟုကယာ်လၢဟံၣ်ပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲယသးအိၣ် ၅နံၣ်န့ၣ် ယမိၢ်သံသဒၣ်ကွံာ် ယၤဒီးယဘၣ်တၢ်ကဟုကယာ်ယၤလၢယပၢ်ဒီးယဒီပုၢ်ဝဲၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယမ့ၢ်ယဲ ပှၤခိဖိဒီး ယတမၤလိဘၣ်တၢ်ဒိၣ်ဒိၣ်ထီထီဘၣ်. ယမၤ စံာ်ပှဲၤတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤ ဒီး ဃုအီၣ်ညၣ်လီၤ. ယခူၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီးထံပူၤဒီးလုၢ်အီၣ်လုၢ်အီဘၣ်ယမါဒီးယဖိ ၉ဂၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢတၢ်လုၢ်ဒိၣ်ထီၣ် ဖိဆံးတဖၣ်အခါ, တၢ်ဃံးတၢ်စ့ၤအိၣ်ဝဲဒီးဘၣ်လုၢ်ဒိၣ်ထီၣ်ဖိတဖၣ်လၢတၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲလီၤ. ယွၤဆှၢခီဖျိပှၤတဆီဘၣ်တဆီ ဒီး အခဲအံၤ ယဖိသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤဒ်အကြၢးန့ၣ်လီၤ.
ဒူသဝီလၢယအိၣ်န့ၣ်တၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲဖးဒိၣ်တမံၤလၢသဝီဖိတဖၣ် ဘၣ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဝဲလၢ တၢ်ထူစံာ်ဒီးတၢ်ဃုအီၣ်ညၣ်အပူၤ မ့ၢ်ဂုၢ်အၢ ဂုၢ်သီတဖၣ် အတၢ်မၤတံာ်တာ်ပှၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဂုၢ်အ့ၣ် ဂုၢ်ဖျး မ့ၢ်တၢ်ဘၣ်ယိၣ်တၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲလၢအကဲထီၣ်သးလၢတၢ်မၤလီၢ် အပူၤ န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်ချုဒ့ၣ် ချုညၣ် ဘျၢၣ်သဒီၣ် သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ် အါတက့ၢ် ပှၤမၤလၢ မုၢ်နၤခီလီၤ. လၢညါန့ၣ် လီဆှီတအိၣ်ဘၣ်. ပသူဒၣ် မ့ၣ်အူဒၢ ဒီးပလဲၤတၢ်လၢချံ လၢမုၢ်နၤတၢ်ခံးအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. သးသမူတဖၣ်လီၤမၢ်ကွံာ်အါမးလၢ ယသဝီမ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ, သဝီအိၣ်လၢပကပိာ် ကပၤမ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ ခီဖျိလၢဂုၢ်အ့ၣ်အဃိန့ၣ်လီၤ. ထံကီၢ်တဖၣ် လၢအတူၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်သံတၢ်ပှၢ်အနီၣ်ဂံၢ်အါကတၢၢ်လၢဂုၢ်အၢဖျးပှၤအဃိ အကျါ ကီၢ်ပယီၤပၣ်လၢ အခိၣ်စိးလီၤ. ယနီၢ်ကစၢ် ဘၣ်ဒိ ဒီးဂုၢ်အၢ ၁၂ ဘျီလီၤ. တၢ်စုၣ်ထီၣ်, ဆံၣ်တပၢၤ, မဲာ်ချံလါထီၣ်, ဒီး သးအုဖးဒိၣ် ဒီး ယဘၣ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်ယဲ ကီကီခဲခဲနးနးကျံၤကျံၤလီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်ယွၤအတၢ်ဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤလီၤလီၤဆီဆီအဃိ ဂုၢ်အၢအ့ၣ်ယၤ ၁၂ ဘျီသနာ်က့ ယတသံဘၣ်. ယွၤအိၣ်ဒီးယၤ ဒီးဒုးမူယၤ လီၤ. အအံၤမ့ၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်သူၣ်ကညီၤသးကညီၤယၤထူးထူးတီၤတီၤ လၢယၤဒီးယဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိအဂီၢ်လီၤ.
တဆီဘၣ်တဆီ လၢခံ ခီဖျိပှၤနာ်န့ၢ်ယၤအဃိ ယကဲထီၣ်ယဲ ဒူသဝီခိၣ်နၢ်လီၤ. ယမၤစၢၤဘၣ်ဒူဖိသဝီဖိသနာ်က့ တဘျီဘျီမ့ၢ်ဝဲ တၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲဖးဒိၣ်လၢတၢ်တီခိၣ်ရိၣ်မဲအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲ ခိဘ့း-၁၉ ဘၣ်ဒိဆါ ထံဖိကီၢ်ဖိအခါ, ပဒိၣ်ဟ့ၣ် တဟံၣ် ၄၀,၀၀၀ ဘး လီၤ. စ့လၢဟဲလီၤန့ၣ်တလၢလီၢ်အဃိ ပှၤတနီၤတမၤန့ၢ်ဒီးယဘၣ်တၢ်ကတိၤဆါယၤလီၤ. ဖဲ ပဘှီက့ၤ သဝီကျဲမုၢ်ဒီး ထီထီၣ် လီမ့ၣ်အူ လၢသဝီအဂီၢ်အခါစ့ၢ်ကီး, ယဘၣ်တၢ်ကတိၤအၢတိၤသီယၤ ခီဖျိလၢ တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်အါမံၤ ဟဲလၢပှၤအကလုာ်ကလုာ် လီၤ. အမၤစၢ်လီၤယသးအဂံၢ်အဘါဖးဒိၣ်လီၤ.
ဒ်လဲၣ်ဂ့ၤ ဒ်လဲၣ်ဂ့ၤ တဘျီလၢ်လၢ်ဖဲ ယကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဘၣ် တၢ်ဘၣ်ဒိဘၣ်ထံး, တၢ်ဆူးတၢ်ဆါ, တၢ်ဒုၣ်ဒွဲၣ်စံးအၢယၤအခါန့ၣ်, ယဟံးန့ၢ်က့ၤဂံၢ်ဘါလၢ တၢ်ချံးလီၤခီၣ်လၢယွၤမဲာ်ညါ, တၢ်ဟံးန့ၢ်တၢ်ကူၣ်သ့လၢတၢ်ဖးယွၤကလုၢ်ကထါ, တၢ်ဃ့တၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ကူၣ် လၢတံၤသကိးဒီးပှၤမၤသကိးတၢ်, တၢ်တူၢ်လိာ်တၢ်မၤစၢၤဆီၣ်ထွဲ လၢဒူၣ်ဖိထၢဖိဒီးဖိလံၤသ့တဖၣ်, ဒီး တၢ်ဆီၣ်လီၤသးဒီးတၢ်ကျဲး စၢးနၢ်ပၢၢ်ပှၤဂၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ထီဘိ ယွၤတလီၤတူာ်လၢအဟ့ၣ်က့ၤယၤ တၢ်ကူၣ်သ့ကူၣ်ဖး ဒီးတၢ်ဂံၢ်တၢ်ဘါဘၣ်.
တၢ်ခဲလၢာ်အပူၤန့ၣ်တၢ်ပာ်ဒိၣ်ယွၤမ့ၢ်တၢ်အရ့ဒိၣ်ကတၢၢ်လီၤ. ပမ့ၢ်တမၤလိဘၣ်တၢ်အထီကတၢၢ်, ပမ့မ့ၢ်ဒၣ်ထဲပှၤထူအီၣ်စံာ် ယိယိဖိ သနၣ်က့, အလီၢ်တအိၣ်လၢပကဘၣ်ဆိကမိၣ်ဆံးလီၤပသးဘၣ်. ပမ့ၢ်တသန့ၤပသးလၢပတၢ်ကူၣ်တၢ်ဆးဒၣ်ပဝဲ, ပမ့ၢ်သ့ၣ်ညါယွၤလၢကျဲခဲလၢာ်အပူၤ, ဒီး ယွၤမ့ၢ်အိၣ်လၢပတခီပၤအဃိ အဝဲကမၤလိၤပကျဲ ဒီး ပကမၤနၢၤတၢ်လီၤ. တၢ်ပာ်ဒိၣ် ယွၤ, တၢ်မၤသကိးတၢ်, ဒီး တၢ်ဟ့ၣ်လီၤပသး န့ၣ်ကစိာ်ထီၣ်ပှၤ ဆူတၢ်မၤနၢၤ ဒီး ယွၤအလၤကပီၤကအိၣ်ဖျါထီၣ်ဝဲလီၤ. သန့ၤနသး လၢယွၤလၢတၢ်ခဲလၢာ်အပူၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.
ဖါတံၢ်တၤလ့ၣ်ခိၣ်
ကီၢ်လါ
တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
တၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲတဖၣ်လၢပကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဘၣ်လၢဟီၣ်ခိၣ်အံၤအိၣ်ဝဲအကလုာ်ကလုာ်လီၤ – တၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤတအိၣ်, တၢ်လီၤမၢ်တဖၣ်, တၢ်ဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မး, တၢ်ရ့လိာ်မုာ်လိာ်အတၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲ, ကျိၣ်ဧိၤစ့ဧိၤအတၢ်ဃံးတၢ်စ့ၤ, တၢ်ဆူးတၢ်ဆါ, တၢ်မၤပှၤတတီတလိၤ, ဒီး တၢ်အဂၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်လီၤ. ထဲပဂံၢ်ပဘါ တမ့ၢ်တၢ်အလၢအလီၢ်လၢပကတိဖျိန့ၢ် သးသမူအတၢ်တၤပှၤလၢကျဲအါဘိဘၣ်. ပလိၣ်ဘၣ်ယွၤအဂံၢ်အဘါလီၤ.
နလိၣ်ဘၣ်တၢ်မၤစၢၤဧါ. တၢ်ကူစါယါဘျါဧါ. တၢ်မုၢ်လၢ်ဧါ. တၢ်သးခုဧါ. တၢ်ဃူဖိးလိာ်သးဧါ.
အါတက့ၢ်နသန့ၤနသးလၢတၢ်မနုၤဖဲနဘှါဆှဲနတၢ်ဂ့ၢ်ကီတဖၣ်လဲၣ်.
နကဆီတလဲတၢ်မနုၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ် ဒ်သိးနကစးထီၣ်သန့ၤနသးလၢယွၤလၢာ်လၢာ်ဆ့ဆ့ လၢတၢ်အိၣ်သးခဲလၢာ်အပူၤလဲၣ်.
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်
ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါ အံၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဝံသးစူၤသိၣ်လိဘၣ်အီၤလၢကသန့ၤအသးလၢနၤ လၢာ်လၢာ် ဆ့ဆ့လၢတၢ်အိၣ်သးခဲလၢာ်အပူၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. လၢနမဲာ်ညါန့ၣ် ယပာ်လီၤ အဝဲအတၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲတဖၣ်ခဲလၢာ်လီၤ. ဝံသးစူၤ မၤပူၤဖျဲးဘၣ်နဖိအံၤ လၢ တၢ်သန့ၤအသးလၢအတၢ်ကူၣ်တၢ်ဆးဒၣ်ဝဲ ဒီး တၢ်သန့ၤသးလၢပှၤကညီ န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ပျၢ်ဘၣ်အတၢ်ကမၣ်ဖဲအလဲၤဝဲဒၣ်ထဲလၢအကျဲ ဒီးမၤဒၣ်ထဲလၢ အတၢ်ဘၣ်အသးန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. မ်နတၢ်တိာ် နတၢ်ဘၣ်သး ကဘၣ်တၢ်မၤ လၢပှဲၤအီၤလၢတၢ်ဘှါဆှဲအတၢ်ဂ့ၢ်ကီတဖၣ်အပူၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. မ်အတိဖျိဝဲ တၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲကန့ၢ်ခီဖျိလၢအသန့ၤအသးထဲလၢနၤတက့ၢ်. ဝံသးစူၤမၤဖျါ ထီၣ် နကျဲလၢအဂီၢ် ဒီးဟ့ၣ်ဘၣ်အီၤတၢ်မၤနၢၤဒုၣ်ဒါန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. စံးဘျုးနၤ လၢ နဒီသဒၢနဖိအံၤ, နဒုးအတၢ်ဒုး, ဒီး နမၤနၢၤတၢ်လၢအဂီၢ်အဃိလီၤ. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤ ယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
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Week 48
LEAN ON GOD; DO NOT LEAN ON YOUR OWN UNDERSTANDING
Proverbs 3:5-6 – “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (ESV)
I grew up in a Karen village. My father was a minister and my mother loved God. I was the youngest son and received love and care from my parents and older siblings. When I was five years old, my mother died. My father, brothers, and sisters took care of me after my mother’s death. I am a simple villager. I did not go to school for higher education. I did farming and fishing mostly. I also had my own business, which was drilling artesian wells. These jobs helped me to raise my family of nine children. When raising young children, the finances were very tight and we struggled a lot. But, God provided for us step by step. Now, my children have decent jobs.
One of the greatest challenges we face in our village is the danger of snakebites when working on the farm and fishing. Venomous snakebites were occupational hazards for farmers and fishermen. Fishing, frog hunting, and shrimp catching were usually done at night. Back then, we did not have flashlights, so we had to use oil lamps. Many in my village as well as villages around us were killed by snakebites. Burma has one of the highest incidences of snakebites that lead to fatality. I myself was bitten by poisonous snakes 12 times. Once the venom got in my vein, it started attacking my circulatory system. I could not urinate. My vision became blurred. I felt a volcano inside my body and extreme thirst. The pain was excruciating to say the least. But, because of God’s special blessings, although I was bitten by venomous snakes 12 times, I am still alive. This is God’s rich mercy for me and my family.
Later I was appointed as a village elder because people trusted me. The rewarding part is being able to help the villagers, but things can get very difficult in leadership. When COVID-19 began to strike, the government gave 40,000 kyats per household. The money sent to us was insufficient and not every household got the money. I was badly criticized for what happened. When we did road construction and installed electric power in the village, people also found faults with me as there were many different opinions. These incidents really weakened my spirit.
In any event, whenever I faced misfortune, snakebites, illnesses, or criticisms, I gained strength from kneeling before God, finding wisdom in the word of God, seeking advice from friends, receiving help and encouragement from family members, and making efforts to understand others’ points of view in humility. Never did God fail in replenishing me with strength and wisdom.
Leaning on God is the most important in any situation. Even if we did not earn higher education and even if we are just farmers, there is no need to think lowly of ourselves. As long as we do not just lean on our own understanding, we acknowledge God, and He is on our side, He will make our paths straight and we will be victorious. Leaning on God, partnering with others, and making sacrifices will lift us up to a victorious place where God’s glory will shine. Lean on God in every situation!
Uncle Tah Lay Koh
Myanmar
REFLECT
The struggles we face on earth are of various kinds: unemployment, losses, grief, relational issues, financial crisis, health problems, unjust treatment, etc.
Our strength alone is insufficient to overcome life’s many challenges. We need God’s strength.
Do you need help? Healing? Hope? Happiness? Harmony?
What do you usually lean on to solve your problems?
What changes will you make so you will begin leaning on God entirely in all situations?
PRAYER FOR THE READER
Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional journal. Please teach them to lean on You in all life’s situations. We lay before you all the challenges Your children are facing. Please liberate them from self-sufficiency or codependency. Please forgive them for forcing their own plans and will. May Your plan and will be done in solving their problems. May they overcome the troubles by leaning on You alone. Please make known to them Your path and give them victory over the enemy. Thank you for protecting Your children, fighting their battles, and winning for them. In Jesus’ Name, I pray. Amen.