Every day on my way to work, I pass the building for Cotton Companies. Below their orange and white sign, they have one of those electric marquees with various messages on them. It's the sort of thing where you'd expect to see "Half off on all widgets!" at an electronics depot or, in the advent of some heady event, "Pray for the troops" or "Columbia will always be remembered."

About a week or so ago, the sign had a very peculiar message:

"You are a champion, Tom!"

Not knowing what the sign could have possibly been referring to, my imagination went to work. Who is Tom? Why is he a champion? Why did Cotton feel the urge to post a sign expressing his champion status? So I started to create a character named Tom who was a champion. I named him after the sign: Tom Cotton.

Since it appears to be a personal message and not one to some superstar named Tom, I made him a regular Joe. About 5'10" or so with reddish hair (probably derived from the orange Cotton sign) and a face with light freckles that were darker when he was younger. But he's not young anymore, he's 35 or so, I decided.

So why is he a champion? Being an unassuming guy, I decided that he was a champion in the everyday sense. He has two daughters that he cares for and a loving wife. That, in a way, makes him a champion. To his family, anyway. And to his friends, since people are explicitly declaring his greatness. He has a lot of friends and is pretty popular, but still in an unassuming way. The kind of guy who is always smiling and whistles as he walks down the hall to get his morning cup of coffee. Decaf, of course, because he's trying to take care of himself.

But what makes him a champion? Perhaps he is a particularly good worker for his company. Being an affable guy, perhaps he is a salesman and won the highest commission of anyone in the department. He is king of his own fishbowl, champion of the sales division. Ask him, though, and he'll say that if he's a champion at all, it's because of his family. Naturally, he'll have a picture of them on his desk and he'll look at it every day to keep him going.

But what, if anything, makes him unique? If I've already defined him as unassuming and humble, what attention-garnering thing would have people proclaiming, on a sign that can only carry one message a day, that he is a champion? Maybe, I thought, he is going through a rough ordeal, people know it, but he's still whistling and smiling as he walks down the hall. Like a champion.

Sadly, I was right.

Today as I was passing the Cotton building, the message on the sign had changed:

"You can beat cancer, Tom!!!!"

I don't know what, if any, of the above about Tom is true. But whoever Tom is, he needs all the support that sign can garner and much, much more. I hope that the sign is correct and that he can beat the cancer. Tonight, I'll pray for that to happen. To anyone out there that communicate with God on a regular (or irregular) basis, I ask that you do the same.