The Cowboy Perseverance Ranch

from Horsemen's Corral April 2022

by Horsemen's Corral

The Language of Numbers Series, Part 2

Chosen

by Rob and Tanya Corzatt

During the summer and fall of 2021, several of our friends here at the barn had been telling T about a Christian series that we needed to watch. It was a series on YouTube called the Chosen. I was slow to try to find it on the Internet until after we went to the theater around Christmas time to watch The Chosen Christmas Special. The majority of the special was music by a variety of contemporary Christian artists. However, there was a segment in the movie where you watch Joseph and a very pregnant Mary travel to Jerusalem only to find that there was no place for them to stay. You will watch Joseph as he cleans manure from a stable area for Mary to rest and ultimately give birth to their son Jesus. It was an enactment of the very first Christmas. After watching that special, I couldn’t wait to begin watching the series. T had already gotten tired of waiting on me and started watching them on her cell phone. She was usually about three episodes ahead of me as I played catchup watching the first two seasons, a total of 16 episodes.

The thing we really like about this series is that it ‘brings to life’ the cast of characters that were in Jesus’ short life on Earth. We don’t really know that much about the individual disciples. There is a great deal of artistic license taken to prepare the series. The producers had to because none of us were there to observe these events and the Bible does not provide much detail on the individual lives of the disciples. This series provides each with personalities that are based on the information that we do have from the Bible and other historic information. We get to see the flaws, the quirks, the anxieties, the frustrations, the tempers, the obsessive compulsive behavior, the demons, etc. that the disciples and Jesus’ other traveling companions may have dealt with in their lives…before, during and after their time with Jesus.

This article isn’t really supposed to be a review or advertisement for the series. I wanted to use it as the basis for Christ’s acceptance of a bunch of partially or extremely dysfunctional individuals to spread the Gospel to the world. I wrote in a previous article that Christ selected a zealous persecutor of early Christians, Saul of Tarsus, and turned him into the most zealous apostle for the Gospel, the apostle Paul. I have faults, my wife T has faults, everyone of you reading this has faults. But Jesus will take us just as we are to help Him grow His kingdom. We are blessed to be accepted, warts and all. He is not judgmental at this time. His judgement is reserved for a future time.

Despite my best efforts, I can be judgmental at times with both people and horses when I first meet them. As I have written before I am a Quarter Horse snob and make no apology for being so. I grew up with them and that is all T and I personally own at this time. I love the stocky build, endless color palette (Blue Roans rule!) and gentle disposition of the breed. That being said, we have had some horses that I would not have given a second look come through our barn. Some were downright ugly, some were super flighty and others just had a mean streak. One in particular has a rotten streak a mile wide. He is a very smart horse and knows all the right buttons to push to make me want to strangle him at times! He knows if he starts banging on the gate because we aren’t fast enough to let him in to eat, that he better keep moving so I can’t get ahold of him. But under saddle with his owner, a young lady, he has become quite the gentleman. He doesn’t try to buck her off anymore! It has taken a few years to get him to that point, but we, and she, didn’t give up on him. Just like Jesus doesn’t give up on us. I am sure I have pushed Jesus’ buttons over the years. Fortunately, he hasn’t throttled me either.

There is an off the track Thoroughbred in our barn that suffered from some leg and laminitis issues when he was purchased by another young lady. He has been with us for close to three years now. He doesn’t adapt to change all that well. It doesn’t help that just about every time a new horse comes to the barn, they end up in the stall right beside him before a little bit until we see how they will work with the other turnouts. His diet requires several supplements and he gets them twice a day. Five of the eight trash cans we currently use to store feed belong to him! It is truly a labor of love for his owners to not only purchase, but pre-measure and bag his supplements to make feeding time a little less time consuming for us. It is also pretty amazing to see how far along he has come. Again, his owners and my wife did not give up on him and he has become a very good horse for his owner.

None of the horses we personally own are going to win any halter classes. A couple are a little cow-hocked and one has a good sized knot on her rear leg that she has had since we bought her several years ago. As I write this, she is recovering from a wound that has kept her in her stall for a week now. She is an integral part of our lesson herd. We use her for horsemanship lessons for many of the younger kids and also use her to work cows with the kids interested in learning ranch roping skills. I am glad we did not pass on her years ago because of that blemish, we would have missed out on a very special horse. By the time you read this, she should be healed up and off the bench. We have been blessed with a herd of horses that have the disposition and the patience to ‘deal’ with a lot of green students just learning S