Twice within the past two weeks, I’ve had the amusing experience of encountering — during the course of everyday business — people with whom I’ve shared some form of tangential connection in the past. We’ve all been there — you’re buying stamps at the post office, and you bump into a former classmate from high school. Or you’re at the dentist’s for your annual checkup, and the new hygienist was once the little girl who grew up across the street.

In the first of my two occurrences, an advertising agency hired me to write a magazine ad for a local company. During the course of finalizing the ad copy, I discovered that the client and I had actually met more than 25 years ago — at the time, he was recently married to my best friend’s elder sister. In the second instance, the barista who drew my morning latte at Starbucks turned out to be a singer in a group that performed in a holiday show last year, in which my quartet also performed.

Walt Disney was right: It’s a small world after all.

Situations like these illustrate the fact that we touch the lives of many more people than we realize we do. Just stop to think for a moment about all of the people you’ve known in your lifetime. I don’t just mean your family members, your friends, your coworkers, or your neighbors. Think of all of the clerks who’ve rung up and bagged your groceries at the supermarket. The mechanics who have serviced your cars. The strangers with whom you’ve struck up a casual conversation while watching a baseball game, or waiting for a flight at the airport, or standing in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Could you even reasonably estimate how many people should be on that list of contacts?

Now think about the impressions you’ve left on all of those people. It’s been more than a quarter-century since I last saw the man whose ad I wrote, but I remembered his name, and he remembered mine, and with a little mutual prompting we both even recalled the couple of occasions when we sat in the same living room watching the same football game on TV. I didn’t remember the girl at Starbucks, but she certainly remembered me, and was complimentary about my quartet. Here were two people I didn’t know I knew, but I’d left an impression in both of their minds.

If you’re a Christian, you should be startled to realize that you make a mark on the lives of numerous people every day, often without even realizing that you’ve done so. You may not even recall interacting with some of those folks, but they may well remember you — whether favorably or unfavorably will depend upon the nature of that interaction.

Most importantly, what do those interactions tell the world about Jesus Christ? What portrait do we paint of our Lord and Savior with our words, our behavior, and our attitudes — even in those situations where we don’t know the people around us and may not ever expect to see them again?

Jesus often used casual contacts as stepping stones to more meaningful conversations: the woman at Jacob’s well (John 4), the man born blind (John 9), and Zacchaeus (Luke 19) are but three examples we could cite. Paul did likewise — think of the Philippian jailer in Acts 16. How many seemingly insignificant connections do we make in the world around us that might turn into opportunities for the gospel — if we conduct ourselves in a Christ-like manner?