I don’t remember when it was announced that earth’s population had just exceeded 8 billion people. It’s staggering when you think about it. 8 billion people! And that’s only the ones alive right now. Who really knows how many people have lived and died since Adam and Eve or the Big Bang or whenever it was that it all got started. Perhaps, as Carl Sagan used to say, “billions and billions” of people have come and gone.

Even more staggering than the numbers is the indescribable diversity among them all. Big people, dwarfs, geniuses and dunces, just plain folk, rednecks, people of all colors and kinds and personality types. Likable people, hateful people, some heroic and some cowards, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. But all in all, all have pretty much been the same. All except for one. Amidst the billions, amidst both the diversity and the sameness, there is one who stands out. He stands out because he’s the point of it all. He’s why the billions of the rest of us have been here or are here or will be some day.

You couldn’t tell it from looking at him, had you been one of the few who were alive when he was. He didn’t glow or vibrate or carry a sign that said, “I’m the One.” He looked like everyone else. For all we know he was the one billionth person born into this world. Or the two billionth. I have no idea how many people preceded him. But he’s the point of it all.

It sounds weird saying he’s the point of it all. I walk through the mall or sit with thousands at a football game and no one seems any more important than anyone else. If any of them stood up and shouted, “I’m the point of it all” we’d look for a moment and then write it off as just another kook and go ahead shopping or cheering or booing.

So where do I get off saying there really was one who is the point of it all? And why this one? Why not one of the millions of Chinese people who’ve lived and died? Why not one of the millions of Sudanese or Australians or Finns or Eskimos or Americans? There’ve been a lot of amazing people in the midst of the average ones. We’ve seen heroes and heroines, champions and martyrs and philosophers and entrepreneurs and all sorts of extraordinary people. I have to admit, it strikes me as a bit pompous to say that there’s one who’s the point of it all, that there’s one who’s the reason why others are here and is the goal of where they’re going.

Almost everyone thinks they know who’s the point of it all. Millions of Muslims think it’s Muhammad, Buddhists think it’s the Buddha, African Americans think it’s Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Tiger Woods. Young conservative activists think it’s Charlie Kirk. They’ve got their reasons. They’re so convinced they’ll die for it. Many of them will kill for it, too. But there’s a big difference between the Buddha and Tiger and Martin and Bill Gates and anyone else that anyone else thinks is the point of it all. The one I have in mind is the Creator, the one who has always been there and one day said, “Be!” and the rest of us suddenly appeared.

But if the one who is the point of it all was born and looked like everyone else, how can I say he’s the Creator. Assuming there’s a God, and I assume you assume that or you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog in the first place, isn’t it preposterous to describe him as if he were a man who looked like everyone else? Yes. You’re right. It strikes me as preposterous. Yet, for reasons that I’ve never been able to fully understand, I believe that the Creator became a creature, that God became a man. When he did, he lived like an ordinary person. He ate and slept and laughed and cried and belched and blew his nose and cried and died. But he was still God. Am I stupid for believing this? Are you?

A lot of people think it’s stupid. But one thing’s for sure. Once you believe it, once he is the point of it all for you, life is never the same. Makes sense. You can’t go around believing that there is a God, that he made everything that is, and that he became a human named Jesus, and not be utterly and absolutely and irrevocably and eternally changed by it all. Some argue that we Christians are changed for the worse. But you’ll never convince me. That’s because I’ve met him. I know him. I talk to him all the time. He talks to me. He’s the point of it all.

Maybe I ought to pause long enough to explain what that means. It means that everything that is was made by him. It means that everything that is, is, for no other reason than that he says so. It means that everything that is, is, so that everything that is might know that he’s the point of it all. Well, now that it’s all perfectly clear . . . !

A friend of mine wrote a simple song that said, “Nothing matters but you, O Lord, nothing matters but you.” He was talking about Jesus. When I sing those words, even when I write them, or just think them, it feels good. It’s like I’ve finally arrived where I’m supposed to be. It’s like I’m finally doing what I’m supposed to do. For some of you, saying that nothing else matters but Jesus sounds a little grandiose. I mean, really, can’t we leave room for a few other things to be important, like money or sex or comfort or friends or football. Anything. Of course we can. All those things are important. They’re just not as important. In fact, they’re important only because, like everything else, they are because of him, through him, and for him.

He’s the point of it all. He’s the point of money. He’s the point of sex. He’s the point of comfort and friends and family and power and houses and clothes and movies and breathing and food. That means that apart from him those things, and everything else, are pointless. They don’t seem pointless. They seem like fun. They seem to be the reason why people live, work, steal, lie, and whatever else they do to get more of those things. But they’re pointless without him. As another friend of mine often says, “It’s all gonna’ burn someday.” He’s the point of it all.

I’m in a strange season of life right now. It’s hard to describe. It’s just that I’m frustrated more than I’ve ever been before by how futile and empty and vain all those other things are. It’s hard to believe that when you see most of the world killing each other to get them. And when they do get them, they seem so happy and content. At least, that’s how they make themselves look to everyone else. Maybe they really are happy and content. I can only speak for myself when I say he’s the point of it all and then hope that by hearing what I have to say about him you’ll agree and stop thinking and living like all that other stuff is the point of it all.

My goal is to do anything I can, by the grace of God, to enable you to see and perceive and grasp and savor and relish the incomparable splendor and supremacy of Jesus Christ (not just non-Christians, but believers who have grown complacent and perhaps arrogantly think they already know all that can be known of him). Why? Because, ultimately speaking, in the final analysis, he’s the point of it all. Because, ultimately speaking, in the final analysis, he’s the only thing that matters and nothing else matters except insofar as it is rightly aligned under and around and for him.

He is the center. All else is circumference.