လါဖ့ၣ်ဘြူၤအါရံၤ ၁၄, ၂၀၂၁
စ့တဖဲနံၣ် ဖိးစခး
တၢ်ဖးဖျိလံာ်စီဆှံဝံၤလၢတနံၣ်အတီၢ်ပူၤအဂီၢ် – ၂မိၤၡ့ ၁၅, ၂မိၤၡ့ ၁၆, မးသဲ ၂၈:၁-၂၀,
စံးထီၣ်ပတြၢၤ ၂၁:၈-၁၃
‘‘မၤသးဒ်န့ၣ်ဒီး, လဲၤဒုးကဲထီၣ်ပှၤအကလုာ်တဖၣ်ခဲလၢာ်လၢယပျဲၢ်ယဘီၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဒီးဘျၢအီၤလၢပၢ်, ဒီးဖိခွါ, ဒီး သးစီဆှံအမံၤအပူၤတက့ၢ်.’’
မးသဲ ၂၈:၁၉
ထဲခရံာ်ဖိအတၢ်အုၣ်အသးအဆံးဖိဒၣ်လဲာ်ဒုးကဲထီၣ်ခရံာ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်တစိၤသးသ့ဝဲန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲ ၁၉၂၀ စးထီၣ်သီန့ၣ်, တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်ကွၢ်ထွဲဘျၢထံတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်အဆံးဖိတဖျၢၣ်လၢအိၣ်လၢခိခိၣ်ဒူသဝီလၢကီၢ်အမဲရံကၤကီၢ်စဲၣ် အ့လနွါ ကလံၤထံးတခီန့ၣ် သဆၣ်ထီၣ်အတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်ဖိအခံ လၢကကွဲမုာ်ပှၤအိၣ်လၢတၢ်တဝၢအပူၤတဖၣ် လၢတဘၣ်ထွဲဒီး တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပိာ်မုာ်သးစၢ်တဂၤတူၢ်လိာ်ဝဲဒီးဆှၢလီၤဝဲဖိးစကးကွဲမုာ်တၢ် လၢလံာ်တၢးဒီးဟ့ၣ်ဘၣ်ဝဲစ့တဖဲနံၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲကွဲမုာ်ဝဲပှၤမၤစံာ်ဖိအဒီမါ၀ၤဒီးအဖိ ၆ ဂၤလၢကဟဲဘါသကိးယွၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်လၢတအိၣ်ဒီးအသိလ့ၣ်, ဟးဝဲတၢ်ဒ့ၣ်စၢၤယံၤ ၁၀ မံးလာ်, အလဲၤဒီးအက့ၤ, ဒီးလဲၤအိၣ်သကိးဝဲဒူၣ်ဖိထၢဖိအံၤဒီးကွဲမုာ်ဝဲအနီၢ်ကစၢ်စ့ၢ်ကီးလီၤ.
တၢ်သးခုကစီၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ဒုးကဲထီၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်အတၢ်မၤစးထီၣ်ကယီကယီဒီးအသဟီၣ်ဟဲအါထီၣ်ဖဲအလါတဖၣ်လၢ ပိာ်ထွဲထီၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တယံာ်တမီၢ်, ဖိသၣ်ခဲလၢာ်, အကျါတဂၤမ့ၢ်ယပၢ်, လဲၤဘါယွၤထီဘိကိးနွံ, ပာ်ဃုာ်စ့ၢ်ကီးဒီးယဖံ လၢအနီကသ့ၣ်လ့ၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ခဲလၢာ်ကဲထီၣ်ဝဲခရံာ်ဖိဟ့ၣ်လီၤသးတဖၣ်လီၤ. ဒူၣ်ဖိထၢဖိအကျါ ၂ ဂၤဖျိထီၣ်လံာ်စီဆှံကၠိဒီး ကဲထီၣ်ဝဲတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ်တဖၣ်လၢကီၢ်အမဲရံကၤဘျၢထံတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်တဖၣ်အါနံၣ်လီၤ. ဖိခွါသၢဂၤတဂၤအသံဝဲ တချုး အမၤဝံၤဘၣ်ဝဲဒီးဖျိထီၣ်လံာ်စီဆှံဖၠၣ်စိမိန့ၣ်လီၤ. ဖဲတကတီၢ်ဃီန့ၣ်, ယပၢ်ဟူးဂဲၤလၢတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်အပူၤ, သိၣ်လိ အိၣ်ဘှံးနံၤ တၢ်မၤလိတတီၤ ဒီးကဲဝဲပှၤပၢၤစ့တဘျုးနံၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်ခဲလၢာ်အံၤစးထီၣ်အသးလၢစ့တဖဲနံၣ်ဖိးစကးဖိအဃိလီၤ.
ပမၤသကိးဘၣ်တၢ်လၢခရံာ်အတၢ်မၢလီၤအတၢ်မၤ ဒ်သိးပကဒုးကဲထီၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်တဖၣ်ဖဲပအိၣ်တပူၤလၢ်လၢ်လီၤ. ယတံၤသကိးအါဂၤလၢ အမ့ၢ်ပှၤကညီကလုာ်ညီနုၢ်ကတိၤဝဲဘၣ်ဃးဒီး အဝဲသ့ၣ်ခရံာ်ဖိတၢ်န့ၢ်သါလၢအဟဲခီဖျိလၢ သရၣ်ယူဒၤသၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. သရၣ်အတၢ်အိၣ်မူ မ့ၢ်ဝဲတၢ်အိၣ်မူအိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်တူၢ်ဆါခီၣ်ဆါသးလၢတၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲအပူၤ, တၢ်ဂံၢ်တၢ်ဘါ, တၢ်သူၣ်ဒူသးဒူ, ဒီးအါန့ၢ်အန့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢပဝဲခဲလၢာ်အဂီၢ်န့ၣ် တၢ်ဒုးကဲထီၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်စးထီၣ် ဖဲပအိၣ် အလီၢ်အခဲအံၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ကမ့ၢ်ဝဲပှၤလၢအိၣ်လၢပဃၢၤ, ပှၤလၢပမၤသကိးတၢ်, ဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိတဂၤ, တံၤသကိးတဂၤ န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပအိၣ်ဒီးကစၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်အၢၣ်လီၤအီလီ, ဖျါဖဲ (မးသဲ ၂၈:၂၀), အဝဲကအိၣ်ဒီးပှၤထီဘိ, ‘‘တုၤလၢအစိၤကတၢၢ်လီၤ.’’
အမ့ၢ်ဝဲတၢ်ခွဲးအယာ်လီၤဆီလၢယဂီၢ်လၢယမၤသကိးဘၣ်တၢ်လၢ အရံၣ်စိနါကညီဘျၢထံခရံာ်ဖိတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ် အိၣ်လၢ ဝ့ၢ်ဖံးန့းက်စ် ခီဖျိယတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်လၢ စၢန်စံၣ်တံၣ် ယံာ်အါန့ၢ် ၁၂ နံၣ် လီၤ. ယတထံၣ်ဘၣ်ယဲနီတခီၣ် ပှၤဒ်သိး ပှၤကညီတဖၣ်လၢ အအိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်ဆီၣ်လီၤသး, တၢ်ထိၣ်ဟူးထိၣ်ဂဲၤပှၤလၢတၢ်မၤအဂ့ၤ, တၢ်သူၣ်ဆူၣ်သးဂဲၤ, လၢအဟ့ၣ်လီၤအသးလၢတၢ်မၤကစၢ်ယွၤအတၢ်မၤန့ၣ်ဘၣ်. လၢတၢ်န့ၣ်အဃိ, ယတၢ်မၤသကိးတၢ်ဒီးပှၤကညီ မ့ၢ်ဝဲတၢ်အဲၣ်အတၢ်ဂဲၤလိာ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.
တၢ်ဒုးဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤလံာ်စီဆှံဒီးပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ
ယွၤကိးယၤလၢယကကဲထီၣ်အပျဲၢ်အဘီၣ်ဧါ. ယကစံးဆၢဒ်လဲၣ်.
တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်
ယွၤဧၢ, ဖဲပအိၣ်တပူၤလၢ်လၢ်လၢတၢ်အိၣ်အသးတမံၤလၢ်လၢ်အပူၤန့ၣ်, ထိၣ်ဟူးထိၣ်ဂဲၤဘၣ်ပှၤလၢပကကဲ နပျဲၢ်နဘီၣ်တံၢ်နီၢ်လၢနဂီၢ် န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤပဃ့လီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.
ဖီလ်မံၣ်ဒဲၣ်န်
ဘဲလ်ဘၠူဟးထ်စ်တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်
စါန်စံၣ်ထံၣ်, အရံၣ်စိနါကီၢ်စဲၣ်
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February 14, 2021
THE PENNY POSTCARD
Bible in a Year: Exodus 15, Exodus 16; Matthew 28: 1-20; Psalm 21:8-13
“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Matthew 28:19 WEB
Even the smallest investment in Christian witnessing can lead to lifetimes of discipleship. In the early 1920s, the pastor of a small rural Baptist Church in southern Illinois, USA, urged his congregation to reach out to the unchurched in the community. A young lady acted on the challenge and mailed a postcard, costing one penny, inviting a farm couple and their six children, to attend a worship service. The pastor, who had no car, walked 10-miles, round trip, to visit and issue his personal invitation.
This effort of evangelism and discipleship began slowly but gathered momentum in the months that followed. Soon, all the children, including my father, were regular attenders, along with my grandmother who drove the horse-drawn carriage to the weekly services. All became dedicated Christians. Two of that family completed seminary and became long-time pastors with American Baptist Churches. A third son died before he could complete his seminary degree. Meanwhile, my dad became very active in the church, teaching a Sunday School class and serving as treasurer for many years. And all of this began with a penny postcard!
We are involved in Christ’s Great Commission to make disciples wherever we are. My many Karen friends trace their Christian heritage to missionary Adoniram Judson. It is an amazing story of perseverance, strength, courage and much more. For us all, discipleship begins where we are right now. With a neighbor, a co-worker, a family member, a friend. We have Christ’s assurance in Matthew 28:20 that He will be with us always, “to the end of the age.”
For more than 12 years, it’s been my privilege to work with the Arizona Karen Baptist Church in Phoenix through my church in Sun City. I have never met a more humble, yet inspiring and dynamic, group of people dedicated to serving the Lord. For me, it has been a labor of love.
Reflection
Is God calling me to be a disciple? How will I respond?
Prayer
Lord, wherever we are, whatever the circumstances, inspire us to be disciples for you. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.
Paul Meeden
Bellevue Heights Church
Sun City, Arizona