The Leftovers season 2 has many, many stories fighting for attention. Tonight’s episode, “No Room at the Inn,” puts Matt Jamison’s front and center.

Nora Durst goes to the supermarket once a week to buy cereal, milk, orange juice, and enough snacks to fill the stomachs of three kids and a husband. Every week Nora Durst throws away uneaten cereal, whole gallons of spoiled milk, and full cartons of juice because her family no longer exists. The Leftovers season 1 showed Nora’s desperate attempt to cling to her past through routine.

Tonight, The Leftovers season 2, episode 5 mirrors that story with her brother Matt’s attempt to recreate the past by recreating a single day over and over again in the present. Every morning since the night Mary woke up in Miracle, Matt rises from bed turns on the same music, brushes Mary’s teeth, takes her to the market, feeds her the same shake, eats the same burrito for dinner, and repeats his nightly proclamation of love. Everyday, however, it gets harder for him to wake up and find that the blessing he has is the promise of another day.

When the day arrives for Matt to break routine, however, the world turns upside down and Matt gets a look at a different kind of devout group — the people of the encampment. Though the collective looks mismatched, they are all bound together by the belief that Miracle has something to offer them if they can only get across the bridge. Matt believes the same thing. Their radical behavior ranges from corporal punishment to public displays of humility, but they band together in support of achieving whatever it is that lurks beyond the gates. The grass is always greener, right?

Matt is a religious man, a devote follower of God, an upstanding citizen. He makes mistakes, he gets frustrated, he suffers. We saw him bury Patti Levin with Kevin last year and tonight his questionable behavior comes into focus again. What does Matt have to gain from telling the story of Mary’s sudden return to life? A blurb for Miracle’s postcard? His faith and duty does little to help him when he is faced with accusations of rape.

Is the world going to believe that a miracle only Matt witnessed led to the one time in three years that the couple made love and conceived? As Nora pointed out in last week’s episode, the world is cashing in on the greatest scapegoat in history. Need an excuse to run away, act like the departure happened again? Need a way to explain how your wife in a vegetative state is suddenly pregnant? Blame it on the wonders of Miracle, Texas. But Matt is not putting blame on anyone or anything. He is taking his moment, the one that he believes God granted him, and fighting for the world to wake up and see that something divine is interfering with the world.

Or is it? Matt’s story is important at this moment in The Leftovers for two reasons. One, Matt is the only person who received anything worth celebrating in the last three years. Two, Matt is asked why it happened to him. It proves that even if the world is waiting for something good, they are not ready to accept it into their lives because it is not happening to them. Everyone is waiting for the world to fall and not for it to rise again.

Matt’s good charity only pushes him further into despair. Stopping to help a man and his son, leaves him unconscious on the side of the road with his wristbands stolen and his car destroyed. When he gets back to town no one is able to sponsor him. John Murphy arrives, but Matt’s story alienates the only person who can help him get back to the church. Miracle was good to Matt. John wants to know why the rest of the town still suffers. What makes him and Mary so special?

That thought plays over and over in Matt’s head as he faces banishment back into the encampment and struggles to fight for a way back into the park. Finding a man who will guide him back in for a thousand dollars is easy, coming up with the money is another story. Calling upon his religious background, Matt is tasked with beating a man with an oar and calling him Brian. Is that what the religious figure is reduced to?

As the drumbeat of questions drown out all rational thought, Matt pushes on to get Mary back into the city he believes will save her and their baby. Regardless of what anyone thinks of him, Matt is going to get Mary to safety. Nora arrives in the camp in time to get Matt and Nora over the boarder, but the goats once again step in as a testament of intervention and fate.

When Nora was at a crossroads of moving forward with her plan and listening to a man ask her about her pain, a goat was present. When the Murphys’ conversation of faith and testing what Michael and John believe, a goat was slaughtered. Now as Matt is on his way back to a life with his wife and moving on into a life of religious sanctuary, an accident caused by goats stops his path.

The sacrificial animal changes Matt’s course of action. He sends Mary back to live with Kevin and Nora and takes his chances in the encampment. His faith is wavering and maybe the people outside Miracle are the people to restore it. Does he need to repent? Must he face God and ask why? What is his penance?

He is not sure quite yet, but within the encampment, Matt offers himself atop an RV into the public stocks for humiliation and ridicule.

Watch The Leftovers season 2, episode 6, “Lens,” Sunday, November 8 at 9:00 p.m. ET on HBO.