Jeff Ragan > Recent Status Updates

"When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. Beware lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments...Otherwise, you may say in your heart, 'My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.' But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth..." - Deut. 8:11-18

"I would look at my disciples and think, 'This is who I'm dying for. Is it worth it?' The answer would always be, 'Yes.' There was the indescribable feeling I had about each one of them. Real brotherhood would probably be the best way to define it. With all their faults, I loved them. I could see the worth in my men despite the stain of their sins" (172).

"'What did you do with the Hems who didn't change?' Frank wanted to know. 'We had to let them go,' Michael said sadly. 'We wanted to keep all our employees, but we knew if our business didn't change quickly enough, we would all be in trouble'" (86).

"Has any people heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard it, and survived? Or has a god tried to go to take for himself a nation from within another nation by trials, by signs and wonders and by war and by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm and by great terrors, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?" - Deut 4:33-34

"Ce fut moins par vanite que dans le seul but de lui complaire. Il ne discutait pas ses idees; il acceptait tous ses gout; il devenait sa maitresse plutot qu'elle n'etait la sienne. Elle avait des paroles tendres avec des baisers qui lui emportaient l'ame. Ou donc avait-elle appris cette corruption, presque immaterielle a force d'etre profonde at dissimulee?" (313).

"...blood pollutes the land and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it." - Numbers 35:33

"In Greek philosophy there had been a depreciation of the body. The ethical ideal was to be freed from the body and its degrading influences. This view of the body runs counter to the whole witness of Scripture. Body was an integral element in man's person from the outset. The dissolution of the body is the wages of sin and therefore abnormal" (111).

"Yet when a man has been to war, however passe and obsolete that war may become, however small a part he may have played, the experience is part of him. Some things he gains. Some things he loses. Some he learns. To some degree he suffers" (92).

"But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come about that those whom you let remain of them will become as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land in which you live. And it shall come about that as I plan to do to them, so I will do to you." - Numbers 33:55-56

"As a leader, look for methods or programs God is blessing in other places and incorporate them into your work. Watch particularly for God at work 'on the edges.' Organizational analysts have discovered that innovation seldom comes from within a bureaucracy. It usually comes from the edges of organizational life or from completely outside the establishment" (147).

"'Maybe he is not as professional as you think,' Rios-Parkinson said, dismissively. But Larsen had been inside the PSF station, and he had had personal experience in Indiana with the kind of people who are able to conduct operations like that. He clutched his own M4, and he began to be afraid" (192).

"He had to admit that the biggest inhibitor to change lies within yourself, and that nothing gets better until you change. Perhaps most importantly, he realized that there is always New Cheese out there whether you recognize it at the time, or not. And that you are rewarded with it when you go past your fear and enjoy the adventure" (72).

"God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? Behold, I have receive a command to bless; When He has blessed, then I cannot revoke it. He has not observed misfortune in Jacob; Nor has He seen trouble in Israel; The Lord his God is with him, And the shout of a king is among them." - Numbers 23:19-21

"Even before he found what he hoped would be a great supply of New Cheese, if ever, he knew that what made him happy wasn't just having Cheese. He was happy when he wasn't being run by his fear. He liked what he was doing now...Just realizing he was not letting his fear stop him, and knowing that he had taken a new direction, nourished him and gave him strength" (61).

"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live.' And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived." - Numbers 21:8-9

"We laugh at their stupid political correctness shit, but deep down what they are about isn't funny. We're all expendable when it comes to them preserving their power. They're just the latest people to try to butcher their way to utopia" (171-2).

"Haw said, 'Sometimes, Hem, things change and they are never the same again. This looks like one of those times. That's life! Life moves on. And so should we'" (45).

"The Lord is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations. Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Thy lovingkindness, just as Thou also hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now." - Numbers 14:18-19

"'Why should we get benefits?' Haw asked. 'Because we're entitled,' Hem claimed. 'Entitled to what?' Haw wanted to know. 'We're entitled to our Cheese.'"

"Now on the day that the tabernacle was erected the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony, and in the evening it was like the appearance of fire over the tabernacle, until morning. So it was continuously; the cloud would cover it by day, and the appearance of fire by night." - Numbers 9:15-16

"Hem and Haw awoke each day a little later, dressed a little slower, and walked to Cheese Station C. After all, they knew where the Cheese was now and how to get there. They had no idea where the Cheese came from, or who put it there. They just assumed it would be there."

"But the Levites shall camp around the tabernacle of the testimony, that there may be no wrath on the congregation of the sons of Israel. So the Levites shall keep charge of the tabernacle of the testimony." - Numbers 1:53

"Life is no straight and easy corridor along which we travel free and unhampered, but a maze of passages, through which we must seek our way."