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Everybody seems to be searching for significance. Perhaps it's because of the "purpose question" put forth so often, "Why am I here?"

The significance of our lives seems to come at the strangest places and moments when it's least expected. And those responses to seemingly obscure events, for good or evil, are significant. It's an error to assume since we live "behind the Piney Woods curtain," as some say, true significance escapes us.

Because of geography, it's easy to think of East Texas as a bit player on a national stage; that in the worldwide scope of things we pale in comparison to cities like New York or London. It's so simple to just take it easy, let the world go by and go fishing. Who really cares about "little old us?"

But religion is the story of obscure and unexpected events of real significance far from the business of empire.

Cautiously employing a military metaphor, I'll say that faith is like being on a ship, perhaps a troop transport, that's going to storm a beach somewhere but the admiral won't say where.

The veterans of World War II know. It could be a "D-Day" (and all such operations are called "D-Day") on some remote sand spit in the Pacific or at a place called Normandy, where memorials are eventually built and TV specials filmed 50 years later.

So which was more significant? Sand spit or Normandy?

To answer, may I ask who the most famous of Roman leaders is? To define famous, how about a leader most people outside a Latin class could identify. Then, perhaps off the top of their thinking, could they quote a line or two of what he actually said?

Julius Caesar? Caesar Augustus? Mark Anthony? Nero? What - besides "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears ..." or "Et tu, Brute?" (which is really Shakespeare) - springs to mind? To quote "He fiddled while Rome burned," is a popular (and historically wrong) saying about Nero, not by him.

I suspect the quote most people automatically know might be "little" Pontius Pilate, the man who's famous for asking "What is truth?" to an obscure rabbi accused of being a renegade in a remote, "overly religious" region, far, far away from the brightest galaxy clusters on planet Rome.

Pontius Pilate. Here's a guy who intersected with significance on a day that presented itself both as a bummer and a bother. Many people know he said to Jesus, "Have you no answer to the accusations against you?" and "Don't you know who I am?" and to the crowd, "I find no fault with this man" and "Behold the Man." "Ecce Homo" is how it's said in the Vulgate. (John 19:5).

Then finally he washed his hands in front of all, literally and symbolically, and said "I am innocent of this man's blood." That's got to be the equivalent of an open mic blunder of monumental proportions. Two thousand years later, people are still talking about this quote. I guess Pilate thought no one was really listening.

Pontius was a man so obscure, he couldn't be independently verified as having truly existed until archeological discoveries of the 20th century. Yet his words resonate through centuries of time because of his proximity to greatness. It was the person he was near and to whom he was speaking that made the difference. It all happened in a far-off-the-beaten-path place where the main contribution to the world was religion, at a time when there was a glut of gods to choose from. Who'd a thunk it? Pilate didn't, obviously.

Offhand, I'd say this Roman leader on the sand spit of world platforms - not expecting anything to happen that was too significant - was right in the middle of a figurative Normandy without knowing what beach he was really on. Take that, Caesar.

There are some points of view out there that claim man has no ultimate significance, that good and evil are synonymous and life is just a dream. Well then, let's go fishing.

Then there are some religions claiming even the smallest actions are fraught with purpose and "count" in ways that we cannot imagine; that a person may be on Normandy beach and not realize it.

I choose the latter because it's the best representation of reality as I know it - people count. Their choices, words, actions and faithful responses to the day have far-reaching effects, even if they think they're on the sand spit of time. At any moment, no matter where people find themselves, there is an opportunity to do something that could - or does - change the world. That's faith in a nutshell.

Who are you near and to whom are you speaking? The seed sown today may sprout five years from now. Please, for all of our sakes, keep watering.