BY DAVID B. SMITH

N HIS BOOK ON FOOTBALL, Instant Replay, Jerry Kramer describes the magical 1967-1968 NFL season of the (Wisconsin) Green Bay Packers. Coach Vince Lombardi was driving them toward a third straight championship and another Super Bowl ring. They'd just beaten the Los Angeles Rams in the first round of the playoffs, the Western Conference championship, and a big rematch with Dallas (the famous "Ice Bowl" game) was coming up in a week. Everything was clicking; the team was firing on all cylinders. Christmas Eve a bunch of players and wives were over at the home of linebacker Ray Nitschke having some eggnog and just hanging out, enjoying the fruits of victory. For some strange reason nobody was leaving; they were just kind of loitering, waiting for something to happen.

Around 9:00 p.m. Ray's wife, Jackie, asked him to check out the front window; she thought she heard a noise or something. He peeked out there; and parked in the yard, in the gleaming white snowy moonlit landscape, was a brand-new 1968 Lincoln Continental-one of those great big luxurious monster cars with cruise control and everything. And this huge lumbering linebacker, six foot three inches, 240 pounds, who grew up in poverty, just began to bawl. He'd always wanted a Lincoln. As a little kid he'd ridden in a Lincoln one time. And now here it was. He had to put on an overcoat and go out there right then, with his wife snuggled up next to him, and take that baby out for a spin. It's a sweet December story.

Here's What God Pines For
Do you remember a perfect present someone once gave you? The minute you saw it, you said to yourself, "Now my life is complete." Or maybe almost like the prophet Simeon in Luke 2, who is so happy to see the baby Jesus, so thrilled that the Bible's prophecies have been fulfilled, that he sighs contentedly to God, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace" (verse 29).

It makes a thought-provoking holiday question for every disciple of Jesus Christ. What would God like to get on December 25? Does He make a list? What would gladden His heart? What has He been pining for ever since Christmas night of a year ago?

A lot of the carols you've been hearing down at the mall these past few weeks-or months, in some cases-talk about the fact that we want to exchange presents with the King of kings. "As With Gladness Men of Old" was written by William C. Dix in the late 1800s, and the third verse is about the three Wise Men:

"As they offered gifts most rare, At that manger rude and bare, So may we with holy joy, Pure, and free from sin's alloy, All our costliest treasures bring, Christ, to Thee our heav'nly King."

As mere mortals, we have a difficult time conjuring up a picture of God really wanting anything. Can He desire something on Christmas Eve? Can He anticipate, and feel either giddy joy or the dull pain of disappointment when you or I leave a bare spot under His tree December 25?

In his book Conversations With Kennedy, family friend Ben Bradlee tells about being with the thirty-fifth president and his wife for JFK's forty-sixth birthday, May 29, 1963, just a few months before the tragic assassination in Dallas. And there at Camp David, Ben and his wife, Tony, watched in amusement as the president ripped open one present after another. There were family gifts; there were presents from politicians. Heads of state had sent packages large and small. And with this mountain of stuff to unfold and unwrap, Bradlee noted that Kennedy was like a little kid. Not in being excited about all the gifts, but in the way he was blanking out over the excess of it all. "Here's one from Senator So-and-so," Jackie would tell him. So he would tear off the paper and just stare at the gadget or memento or picture of Mount Rushmore carved out of cheese. Or whatever. And the chief executive would give a shrug. "Oh. OK. On to the next thing."

It was clear that for this wealthy, prosperous, millionaire world leader, who already had everything in the world he needed, and who was always posing in the Oval Office with football teams and AFL-CIO teamsters, and who was always getting free sweatshirts and model cars and pineapples and cakes and souvenirs, you just couldn't impress the man. There was no way to get John F. Kennedy to pause and reverently treasure a present and then say in awe: "Guys, now that's a present. That's a keeper."

Sometimes we have to wonder if the same is true about God. Is it possible to get through to this Deity and impress Him? He's so rich, He's so powerful, He's so omnipresent and so omniscient and so omnipotent and so "omni-gifted-out" (He already has everything) that we wonder what to do with all the Christmas carols that talk about bringing our best gift to the Christ child.

Well, there's no point in being coy. You know and I know what it is God wants as a Christmas present, what He dreams about at 11:30 p.m. on the twenty-fourth of December. Obviously the Ruler of the universe, who owns the universe and all the cattle on a thousand hills, doesn't want packages and bows and tinsel and toys. The one gift He wants is us. He wants our love and our loyalty and our friendship.

"All He wants is you. No one else will do. Not just a part, He wants all of your heart. All He wants is all of you. All He wants is you" (Audrey Meier).

Just as you and I feel Christmas joy and anticipation and intense pleasure when our dreams come true around the yuletide tree, God is capable of that and much more when He gets that dream gift of a person's heart. In his exceptional book The Knowledge of the Holy, A. W. Tozer comments about our usual picture of an unfeeling Scrooge-in-the-sky: "The Lord takes peculiar pleasure in His saints. Many think of God as far removed, gloomy and mightily displeased with everything, gazing down in a mood of fixed apathy upon a world in which He has long ago lost interest; but this is to think erroneously. True, God hates sin and can never look with pleasure upon iniquity, but where men seek to do God's will He responds with genuine affection. Christ in His atonement has removed the bar to the divine fellowship. Now in Christ all believing souls are objects of God's delight. 'The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love, He will joy over thee with singing' (Zeph. 3:17)."¹

Tozer quietly suggests that the "God loves you"s of His Christmas list aren't just a cheap "Season's Greetings" card message. "From God's other known attributes we may learn much about His love. We can know, for instance, that because God is self-existent, His love had no beginning; because He is eternal, His love can have no end; because He is infinite, it has no limit; because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because He is immense, His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea before which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats confused and abashed."²

John F. Kennedy was just too busy and rich to absorb 200 presents he didn't need. If he had lived to be 100, he could never have worn all the sweaters, played with the toys, eaten all the cheesecakes, and adorned his Oval Office desk with all the paperweights and trinkets. But the "infiniteness" of God means that He is able to pause everything, pause the ceaseless spinning of His universe, pause time itself, and simply come close to your Christmas hearth this year. And wait for you. Wait and hope and wish and pray for you to give yourself to Him as a gift. It's as though there's no other person, no other Christmas tree, no other stocking. And as though God had no other desires; all of His infinite heart of love is yours. Waiting for you to respond.

King David, in writing his 104th psalm, seems amazed to realize that God can pause like that and care about him. Would the God of the universe really stop everything and bend down low and listen to his songs? care about his prayers? walk with him through the valley of the shadow of death? "May my meditation be pleasing to him," David writes, "as I rejoice in the Lord" (verse 34).

And we find that just as we rejoice in God, He is capable of rejoicing in us. Infinitely more capable than we are, of course. And He doesn't rejoice over the ocean of humanity, the vast total of 6 billion (well, yes, He does that, too)-He rejoices over the one. Tozer humbly and gratefully adds: "The love of God is one of the great realities of the universe, a pillar upon which the hope of the world rests. But it is a personal, intimate thing, too. God does not love populations, He loves people. He loves not masses, but men. He loves us all with a mighty love that has no beginning and can have no end."

Think back a year or so to that time when you were going to get somebody a very special gift. This person held a unique place in your heart; you cared very much for them. And you really had planned that present, that unforgettable offering. But the days went by. Pretty soon there were just four shopping days left, then three, then two and one and none. The time slipped away. It got to where, even with FedEx, even with the Internet, you just couldn't make it happen. And the twenty-fifth of December came and went without that sacred magical moment happening. You still gave something, but it was ordinary. They can't remember it, and only with some shame do you recall how the inertia of your indecision took that rare opportunity right away from you.

Don't let that happen this time. God is waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting. Waiting just for you. No one else will do. And really, no one else will do. No one else is you. And His Christmas cannot be complete unless you quietly but firmly make that full decision. You won't let the time pass; you won't send a substitute gift, a last-minute token. You'll give Him all of you: the entire thing, the full heart, the complete surrender, the totality of Year 2003. But you have to choose; it has to be willful . . . just as when you get into your car tonight, and turn on the engine, and go down to the mall and walk the halls until that very best person in your life, who's done so much for you, is cared for the way they deserve.

Make God Jump for Joy
I wish you could picture-and believe me, I know I can't paint the word picture right-of God unwrapping the gift, as it were . . . and it's you. Not someone else: YOU. You're one-on-one with Him right now, and He discovers as He undoes the bow that you've decided to really let Him have your life in 2003. Not just a part; you'll give Him all of your heart. Your whole life. You'll put Him first and best this next year and really mean it. As that gospel song continues: "All He wants is me, unreservedly. Not just a part, He wants all of my heart. All He wants is all of me. All He wants is me."

And as He opens the gift-and sees that it's you, all of you-He turns to His Son, Jesus, who helped pay for the present, of course. And to the Holy Spirit. And to the angels. And a watching universe of holy beings who never tire of Christmas morning around the throne. And God the mighty Father smiles like a little kid. "It's perfect," He says. "This is absolutely awesome and perfect. It's what I always wanted."

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¹ A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco: Harper, 1961), pp. 100, 101.
² Ibid., p. 98.

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David B. Smith is a writer/producer for the Voice of Prophecy broadcasts.