Christmas ကုိဘာျဖစ္လုိ ့ X'mas လုိ ့ေရးၾကတာလဲ?

ခရစ္ေတာ္ဘုရားရဲ ့ေမြးေန ့ေတာ္အခါသမယမွာ၊ ၀မ္းေျမာက္ေပ်ာ္ရြွင္ျခင္းမ်ားနဲ ့၊ ႏွဳတ္ခြန္း ဆက္လြွာေတြ၊ ပုိ ့စ္ကဒ္ေတြ၊ ပုိ ့ ၾက၊ေရးၾကနဲ ့အလြန္ၾကည္ႏူး ဘြယ္ေကာင္းပါတယ္။ ကြ်န္ေတာ့စိတ္ထဲမွာ၊ မေပ်ာ္ႏုိင္တာတစ္ခုက၊ Christmas ကုိ X’mas လုိ ့ေရးၾကတ့ဲ အေၾကာင္းေလးပါ။ ေရးၾကတ့ဲသူကုိအျပစ္တင္တာေတာ့မဟုတ္ပါဘူး၊ ခံစားခ်က္ေလးကုိ ေ၀မွ်တာပါ။ ငယ္ ငယ္ကကြ်န္ေတာ္လဲ၊ ေရးခ့ဲဘူး ပါတယ္၊ အဲဒီတုံးကေတာ့၊ စာလုံးေလးအထူး အဆန္းဆုိျပီး ေရးခ့ဲတာပါ။ အခုေတာ့မေရး ေတာ့ပါဘူး၊ တမင္ကုိမေရးေတာ့တာပါ၊ ေရးရင္စိတ္ထဲမွာမေပ်ာ္လုိ ့။ ကုိယ္မေရးလဲသူမ်ားေတြေရးေနတာျမင္ရေတာ့လဲ ဒီခံစားရခ်က္ေတြေပၚေပၚလါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္၊ ခံစားခ်က္ေလးကုိေ၀မွ်လုိက္တာပါ။

Christmas ကုိ X’mas လုိ ့ေရးၾကတ့ဲသူမ်ားရဲ ့အေၾကာင္းရင္းကုိေလ့လါေတာ့၊ အမ်ဴိးမ်ိဴးေတြ ့ရပါတယ္။ ”အတုိေကာက္” ေရးတာပါတ့ဲ၊ တခ်ဴိ ့က ”ဂရိစာမွာ Christ ကုိ Xp နဲ ့စလုိ ့” Christmas=X’mas, Christian=Xtian=Xtianity” လုိ ့ သုံးၾကတာပါတ့ဲ၊ အမ်ဴိးမ်ဴိးပါဘဲ။ ကြ်န္ေတာ္ကသခ်ာၤေမဂ်ာယူခ့ဲေတာ့၊ X ကုိျမင္ရင္ ”မသိကိန္း”ဘဲေခါင္းထဲ၀င္လါပါတယ္။ မသိတ့ဲကိန္း၊ မသိတ့ဲသူ၊ မသိခ်င္တ့ဲအရာ၊ မသိေစခ်င္တ့ဲအရာေတြကုိ၊ ၾကက္ေျခခတ္ (X) လုိ ့ေရးၾကတယ္မဟုတ္လါး။ ၁၉၇၇ ခုႏွစ္က အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံ၊နယူးဟမ္းရွဳိင္းယားက၊ ျမဳိ ့ေတာ္၀န္ Meldrim Thomson ေျပာတာက၊ X’mas လုိ ့ ေရးတာဟာ၊ ခရစ္ ယာန္မဟုတ္သူေတြေရးတ့ဲခရစ္စမတ္ပါ၊ တ့ဲ။ မိတ္ေဆြေတာ့မသိဘူး၊က်ြန္ေတာ္ကလက္ခံတယ္။

Christmas မွာခရစ္ေတာ္ကုိေဖ်ာက္ျပီး၊မသိကိန္း (ၾကက္ေျခခတ္) ကုိထည့္သုံးျခင္းဟာ၊ခရစ္ယာန္မ်ားသုံးသင့္တ့ဲ အကၡရာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး၊ Franklin Graham ေျပာတာက၊ ”ဒါဟာ၊ခရစ္ေတာ္ရဲ ့နာမေတာ္နဲ ့ဆုိင္တ့ဲစစ္ပြဲၾကီးျဖစ္တယ္၊ ခရစ္ယာန္ မ်ားရဲ ့အျမင့္ျမတ္ဆုံးေသာပြဲေတာ္မွာ၊ ျမင့္ျမတ္တ့ဲခရစ္ေတာ္ရဲ ့နာမေတာ္ကုိေဖ်ာက္ဖ်က္ အစားထုိး ျပစ္တာျဖစ္တယ္”။ ခရစ္ေတာ္ေယရွဳ ဘုရားရဲ ့နာမေတာ္ကုိ၊ ”ခရစ္စမတ္မွာေရာ၊ ခရစ္ယာန္”မွာပါႏွဳတ္ယူ၊ အစားထုိးလုိ ့မရႏုိင္ပါဘူး၊ မယုံၾကည္ သူမ်ားကုိေတာင္ ”ေက်းဇူးျပဳျပီးမသုံးပါနဲ ့” လုိေျပာရမ့ဲအစား ကုိယ္တုိင္က၊ခုံခုံမင္မင္သုံး ေနၾကျခင္းဟာမသင့္ ေတာ္ဘူးလုိ ့၊ ခံစားမိတာပါ။

အခုေခတ္မွာ၊ခရစ္ေတာ္ကုိအစားထုိးေဖ်ာက္ဖ်က္ျခင္းနဲ ့ခရစ္ယာန္မ်ားကုိတုိက္ခုိက္ေနတ့ဲအခ်ိန္ ျဖစ္တယ္။ Merry Christmas ကုိ Happy Holidays လုိ ့သုံးရမယ္၊နိပါတ္ေတာ္စဥ္ပန္းခ်ီကားအရုပ္မ်ားလူျမင္ကြင္းမွာမထားရဘူးလုိ ့၊တခ်ဴိ ့ အလုပ္ေတြမွာ၊ စတုိးဆုိင္ ၾကီးေတြမွာ၊တခ်ဴိ ့ရုံးေတြမွာသတ္မွတ္ လါၾကတယ္။ခရစ္ေတာ္ ေၾကာင့္ စတုိးဆုိင္ မ်ား ေကာင္းၾကီး အၾကီးအက်ယ္ ခံစားရေပမ့ဲ၊ ခရစ္ေတာ္ရဲ ့နာမေတာ္ကုိေတာ္ ေဖ်ာက္ဖ်က္ခ်င္ၾကတယ္။ ၀မ္းနည္းစရာပါ။ ခရစ္ေတာ္ ေၾကာင့္၊ အျပစ္လြတ္ျခင္း၊ ငရဲမွလြတ္ ျခင္း၊ ဘုရားရွင္ရဲ ့အမ်က္ေတာ္မွ လြတ္ျခင္း၊ ဆုိတ့ဲကယ္တင္ ေတာ္မူျခင္း ေက်းဇူး ေတာ္ကုိခံစား ရျပီးမွ၊ ခရစ္ေတာ္ရဲ ့နာမေတာ္ ကုိေဖ်ာက္ဖ်က္ အစားထုိးတ့ဲ၊ အေရးအသား ေတာ့မျပဳသင့္ပါဘူး။ ၾကက္ေျခခတ္ (X)ဟာခရစ္ေတာ္ ေနရာယူ လါတာေတြ၊ ဆန္တာကေလာ့၊ ကခရစ္စမတ္မွာ၊ ခရစ္ေတာ္ ဘုရားထက္အေရးၾကီး ေနရာ၀င္လါတာေတြ၊ ခရစ္ေတာ္ မပါတ့ဲခရစ္စမတ္ ပါတီေတြ၊ဟာေပ်ာ္ၾက ေပမ့ဲအႏွစ္သာရ မျပည့္၀ၾကပါဘူး။ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas မွာလဲဒီအေၾကာင္း ေရးထားတာေတြ ့ရတယ္၊ပုိသိခ်င္ရင္ သြားဖတ္ၾကည့္ပါ။

က်ြန္ေတာ္ရဲ ့ခံစားခ်က္ကုိေ၀မွ်လုိက္တာပါ။ ခံစားခ်က္ခ်င္းမတူညီ ဘူးဆုိရင္လည္းကိစၥမရွိပါဘူး၊ တူညီတယ္ ဆုိရင္ေတာ့၊ ကယ္တင္ရွင္ ေယရွဳသခင္ရဲ ့နာမေတာ္အတြက္မားမားမတ္မတ္ရပ္တည္ရင္း အတူတုိက္ပြဲ၀င္ဖုိ ့၊ေမတၱာရပ္ခံပါတယ္။

ေမတၱာမ်ားျဖင့္၊

ခရစ္ေတာ္၏ျမတ္ေသာနာမေတာ္ျမတ္၌

လတ္ေယရွဲ (ဒီဇင္ဘာ၊၂၀၁၀)

The Shoemaker's Christmas

There once lived in the city of Marseilles an old shoemaker, loved and honored by his neighbors, who affectionately called him “Father Martin”

One Christmas Eve, as he sat alone in his little shop reading of the visit of the Wise Men to the infant Jesus, and of the gifts they brought, he said to himself. “If tomorrow were the first Christmas, and if Jesus were to be born in Marseilles this night, I know what I would give Him!” He rose from his stool and took from a shelf overhead two tiny shoes of softest snow- white leather, with bright silver buckles. “I would give Him those, my finest work.”

Replacing the shoes, he blew out the candle and retired to rest. Hardly had he closed his eyes, it seemed, when he heard a voice call his name…”Martin! Martin!”

Intuitively he felt a presence. Then the voice spoke again…”Martin, you have wished to see Me. Tomorrow I shall pass by your window. If you see Me, and bid Me enter, I shall be your guest at your table.”

Father Martin did not sleep that night for joy. And before it was yet dawn he rose and swept and tidied up his little shop. He spread fresh sand upon the floor, and wreathed green boughs of fir along the rafters. On the spotless linen-covered table he placed a loaf of white bread, a jar of honey, and a pitcher of milk, and over the fire he hung a pot of tea Then he took up his patient vigil at the window.

Presently he saw an old street-sweeper pass by, blowing upon his thin, gnarled hands to warm them. “Poor fellow, he must be half frozen,” thought Martin. Opening the door he called out to him, “Come in, my friend, and warm, and drink a cup of hot tea.” And the man gratefully accepted the invitation.

An hour passed, and Martin saw a young, miserably clothed women carrying a baby. She paused wearily to rest in the shelter of his doorway. The heart of the old cobbler was touched. Quickly he flung open the door.

“Come in and warm while you rest,” he said to her. “You do not look well,” he remarked.

“I am going to the hospital. I hope they will take me in, and my baby boy,” she explained. “My husband is at sea, and I am ill, without a soul.”

“Poor child!” cried Father Martin. “You must eat something while you are getting warm. No, Then let me give a cup of milk to the little one. Ah! What a bright, pretty fellow he is! Why, you have put no shoes on him!”

“I have no shoes for him,” sighed the mother sadly. “Then he shall have this lovely pair I finished yesterday.” And Father Martin took down from the shelf the soft little snow-white shoes he had admired the evening before. He slipped them on the child’s feet…they fit perfectly. And shortly the poor young mother left, two shoes in her hand and tearful with gratitude.

And Father Martin resumed his post at the window. Hour after hour went by, and although many people passed his window, and many needy souls shared his hospitality, the expected Guest did not appear.

“It was only a dream,” he sighed, with a heavy heart. “I did not believe; but he has not come.”

Suddenly, so it seemed to his weary eyes, the room was flooded with a strange light. And to the cobbler’s astonished vision there appeared before him, one by one, the poor street-sweeper, the sick mother and her child, and all the people whom he had aided during the day. And each smiled at him and said. “Have you not seen me? Did I not sit at your table?” Then they vanished.

At last, out of the silence, Father Martin heard again the gentle voice repeating the old familiar words. “Whosoever shall receive one such in My name, receiveth Me…for I was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat; I was athirst, and ye gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in…verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.”

Saving Lifeline

There was a Pastor, who after the usual Sunday Evening Hymns, stood up, walked over to the pulpit and, before he gave his sermon for the evening, briefly introduced a guest minister who was in service that evening. In the introduction, the Pastor told the congregation that the guest minister was one of his dearest childhood friends and that he wanted him to have a few moments to greet the church and share whatever he felt would be appropriate for the service. With that, an elderly man stepped up to the pulpit and began to speak.

"A father, His son, and a friend of his were sailing off of the Pacific Coast," He began, "When a fast approaching storm blocked any attempt to get back to shore. The waves were so high, that even though the father was an experienced sailor, he could not keep the boat upright and the three were swept into the ocean as the boat capsized.

The old man hesitated for a moment, making eye contact with two teenagers who were, for the first time since the service began, looking somewhat interested in his story. The aged minister continued with his story, "Grabbing a rescue line, the father had to make the most excruciating decision of his life: to which boy he would throw the other end of the lifeline. He only had seconds to make the decision. The father knew that his son was a Christian and he also knew that his son’s friend was not. The agony of his decision could not be matched by the torrent of waves. "As the father yelled out, I love you son! He threw out the lifeline to his son’s friend.

By the time the father had pulled the friend back to the capsized boat, his son had disappeared beneath the raging swells into the black of the night. His body was never recovered." By this time, the two teenagers were sitting up straight in the pew, anxiously waiting for the next words to come out of the old minister’s mouth. "The father," he continued knew his son would step into eternity with Jesus and could not bear the thought of his son’s friend stepping into eternity without Jesus.

Therefore, he sacrificed his son to save his son’s friend With that the old man turned and sat back down in his chair as silence filled the room. The Pastor again walked slowly to the pulpit and delivered a brief sermon Within minutes after the service ended, the two teenagers were at the old man’s side.
"That was a nice story," Politely stated the boys, "But I don’t think it was realistic for a father to give up his son’s life in hopes that the other boy would become a Christian." "Well, you’ve got a point there," the old man replied glancing down at the worn Bible. A big smile broadened his narrow face, he once again looked up at the boys and said, "It sure isn’t realistic, is it? But I am standing today to tell you that the story gives me a glimpse of what it must have been like for God to give up His only son for me. You see I was the father and your Pastor was my son’s friend."

Life Saving Blood

Shortly after the first edition of the Miami Herald had gone to press on Sunday night, December 29, 1946, Timothy Sullivan answered the telephone on the city desk. “Please help me,” a woman’s voice pleaded. “My husband is bleeding to death.”

Sullivan got the entire story. The man’s name was Rudy Kovarik, from Dearborn, Michigan. They were on a vacation but he was sick and in the Biscayne Hospital. The AB RH-negative blood he needed was not available at the hospital or other sources. Without a transfusion, the doctors thought he might not live until morning.

What could the city editor do? A man was dying. A woman’s heart was breaking. Then he got an idea—WCBS, fourteen blocks away, where it was almost time for Walter Winchell to go on the air in a nationwide broadcast. The operator at the radio station refused to let him talk to Winchell, but, after some insistence and pleading, she put an assistant of Winchell on the phone. He took a memo of the situation and Sullivan sat back to wait.

Soon the telephones began to go mad. The Herald office, the police station, the hospital were all swamped with calls from all over the nation. People as far away as New York City began to board planes for Miami, the corridors of the Biscayne Hospital were crowded and traffic jammed the nearby streets as would-be donors tried to get to the hospital.

The actual donor was a tourist from New York who heard the broadcast on his car radio, checked his Army dog tags for blood type, and drove two blocks to the hospital. In a few minutes his life-giving blood was flowing into the veins of the stricken man. A few weeks later a healthy-looking man walked up to the Herald’s city desk to thank Timothy Sullivan.

Tan, P. L. 1996, c1979. Encyclopedia of 7700 illustrations : [a treasury of illustrations, anecdotes, facts and quotations for pastors, teachers and Christian workers]. Bible Communications: Garland TX

Opening the Fifth and Sixth Seals - Revelation 6:9-11

Let Him Hear Who Has Ears to Hear- Sermon

Four Horsemen of Tribulation (Revelation 6:1-7)

What can you give?

Bill Wilson pastors an inner city church in New York City. His mission field is a very violent place. He himself has been stabbed twice as he ministered to the people of the community surrounding the church. Once a Puerto Rican woman became involved in the church and was led to Christ. After her conversion she came to Pastor Wilson and said, "I want to do something to help with the church’s ministry." He asked her what her talents were and she could think of nothing---she couldn’t even speak English---but she did love children. So he put her on one of the church’s buses that went into neighborhoods and transported kids to church. Every week she performed her duties. She would find the worst-looking kid on the bus, put him on her lap and whisper over and over the only words she had learned in English: "I love you. Jesus loves you."

After several months, she became attached to one little boy in particular. The boy didn’t speak. He came to Sunday School every week with his sister and sat on the woman’s lap, but he never made a sound. Each week she would tell him all the way to Sunday School and all the way home, "I love you and Jesus loves you."

One day, to her amazement, the little boy turned around and stammered, "I---I---I love you too!" Then he put his arms around her and gave her a big hug. That was 2:30 on a Sunday afternoon. At 6:30 that night he was found dead. His own mother had beaten him to death and thrown his body in the trash......."I love you and Jesus loves you." ....Those were some of the last words this little boy heard in his short life---from the lips of a Puerto Rican woman who could barely speak English. This woman gave her one talent to God and because of that a little boy who never heard the word "love" in his own home, experienced and responded to the love of Christ.....

What can you give? What is your "colt". You and I each have something in our lives, which, if given back to God, could, like the colt, move Jesus and His message further down the road.

SOURCE: Mark Adams, "The Roads He Walked - Palm Avenue."

A Star on my Crown

There was a family with one little daughter. Mother and daughter were very faithful in church and Sunday School attendance The father wasn’t interested and he made it plain it was okay for his wife and daughter, but not for him. He worked in a steel mill, a huge hulk of a man who had been a football player at Ohio University. The daughter, Susie, became ill and was taken for diagnosis to the family doctor. She had leukemia and as it was in an advanced stage it was too late to save her. The family was to take her home, care for her as comfortably as possible before she died.

Each night on coming home from work, Susie’s bedroom was her father’s first stop. He would visit and spend some time with her. Daily her condition worsened and she lost weight, her cheeks were sunken and her color looked very bad.

One night in particular, Susie had obviously been doing some serious thinking, and she asked her father, "Daddy, I know I will die soon and go to be with Jesus. My Sunday School teacher told me that. But, Daddy, when I get to heaven I will be given a crown to wear. And my crown will have no stars because I have not led anybody to know Jesus. So, Daddy, will you give your life to Jesus so I can have a star in my crown?" The father, through the tears, nodded his head and right there prayed a sinner’s prayer of commitment. It made Susie’s eyes light up with joy! She called for her mother and told her what Daddy had just done.

A few days later she passed away. On the next Sunday morning came Susie’s daddy with her mother walking together into church. Time was taken for a "testimony" in the service and this man stood and said, "May I say a few words?" The preacher assured him, "Yes, go ahead." The man went on, "I was resistant to the Gospel and had rejected pastors and evangelists who had tried to lead me. I could reject anyone but my little daughter." He paused to wipe the tears away and went on, "Because she asked me and because she loved me, I gave my life to Jesus. She reached me when no one else could."

Then, just before he sat down he looked upward and finished with this, "And now Susie is in heaven, wearing the crown promised to her and a single star in her crown û that’s me!"

Francis of Asisi kissed the leper

"Francis of Assisi was terrified of leprosy. And one day, full in the narrow path that he was traveling, he saw, horribly white in the sunshine, a leper! Instinctively his heart shrank back, recoiling shudderingly from the contamination of that loathsome disease. But then he rallied; and ashamed of himself, ran and cast his arms about the sufferer’s neck and kissed him and passed on. A moment later he looked back, and there was no one there, only the empty road in the hot sunlight. All his days thereafter he was sure it was no leper, but Christ Himself whom he had met."

—G. K. Chesterton

Loving the needy people is loving Christ. Feeding the hungers, caring the poor, helping the weak, and showing compassion to the needy people is the Lord's will and the fruits of our faith. Do you care?

Day Forty – Final Day of Lenten Devotionals 2010

Word of God: “O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. ⁵⁷ But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)

He Arose! The Shout that Changed the World

They gathered round the market square, in clusters great and small.

In vain they tried their very best to comprehend it all.

Some pointed back to Calvary’s hill, some lingered near the tomb,

While others cried to God above to lift this cloud of gloom.

The hours went by, some went on home, no answers for their grief.

Some felt deceived, some felt betrayed and drowned in unbelief.

That Saturday was worst of all, for they were sure He’d died.

Their friends had stopped their mocking now; they’d proved that Jesus lied.

By Sunday morning all had changed and shouting filled the air,

“Jesus arose just as He said, And He’s no longer there!”

The women ran from house to house and banged upon each door.

“He is not dead! Our Savior lives! Just like He was before!”

The gathered round the market square, they sang, they danced, they prayed,

They peered into the open tomb where Jesus once had laid.

To Thomas, Jesus showed His hands to help his unbelief.

Five hundred hovered near Him as He took away their grief.

The empty tomb, the risen Lord, the Cornerstone He laid;

Upon those words our faith depends, for us the price He paid.

All praises go to Jesus now and evermore shall be,

For He arose! He conquered death, for me eternally! - Mariane Holbrook

Prayer for today: Dear Lord, I thank today for the last day for forty days of Lent season. Thanks for helping me to discover deeper understanding of your words and your love. Help me to restart a new beginning with a new power of your love. Amen.