What's the good word? John's gospel offers a Christmas story without a manger, star, or donkeys but one that gets at the cosmic reason for the season.

DEAR EVERYBODY IN MY ADDRESS BOOK: DON'T worry--I have nothing to report about spouse, children, home, or dog. Nor will I send photos of happy people in matching sweaters. I won't bore you with an update on my anatomical decline, vacations I took, or books and movies I've enjoyed. No politics, either. So relax. This Christmas letter is actually about Christmas.

Lately I've been fascinated by this phrase: In the beginning was the Word. Think about that. It all began when God started talking. Before that--if "before" means anything without time and space--God resided in wonderfully deep silence. Or perhaps, as the ancients imagined, the celestial realm was awash in angelic harmonies that rolled and swelled and filled eternity end to end. But I guess you can't say "end" when talking about eternity, can you? Anyway, if the Trinity had reason to communicate within the divine self, words would not be necessary.

But one day--despite the fact there were as yet no days--during one dot of infinity hardly distinguishable from the others, God decided to say something. Imagine clearing the divine throat for the first word ever to be spoken. How to choose that word? This was a crucial determination, because when God speaks, something comes into being. God's word becomes flesh and takes up residence. It doesn't just evaporate, like so many human words, into nothingness. God's word is real, or, as it says in the Letter to the Hebrews, it's alive.

Which makes you wonder: What made God speak at all? Obviously, God can't be coerced. But surely there was some motivation. Did God get bored with cosmos-as-usual? We say God made the world out of nothing, ex nihilo in Latin. Was the nihilo getting on God's nerves? Did God want more? Can God want, experience need, or sense something missing?

WHY DID GOD START THE WHOLE SHEBANG OF CREATION to begin with? If you re going to start asking why of the Bible, then start with this: Why are we here? Some theologians have worked backwards from the New Testament and concluded: God is love, and love needs an object of affection. Love doesn't exist in a vacuum. Nor do we love generically. We love quite specifically, in fact. So the one who is love itself needed, we could say, a beloved. Maybe it's not quite right to say God was alone before creation--Trinity is never alone by definition--but the love of God deliberately and purposely chose to be shared outside the divine personality.

It seems right to say love doesn't exist in isolation but is only fulfilled in relationship. I've never experienced love that wasn't directed at something or someone. But is it fair to say we can't love generically? Can't I love trees generically? It's true I have yet to meet a tree I don't love. But should one fall on my house I might find myself making exceptions. And although I might tell you I love people in general, that is simply a nice Christian white lie. I love very few people who aren't in my address book.

If God did choose to bring a beloved into being to seek love's fulfillment, then God must have done it the way we might love the mate we haven't met yet. We have an image in mind of the person we would like to share our life with, someone kind and thoughtful, fun to be with, a good companion. Someone capable of loving us back in the measure we're prepared to love. We want to be beautiful in that person's eyes, as he or she is beautiful to us. We want to be the delight of our beloved's heart. We seek an intimacy so real that there is no difference between us--biblically speaking, two become one. And in the ideal of love, that communion is for keeps.

When we stop to think about it, we really hope to fall in love with someone made in our own image. We want them to enjoy what we enjoy. Our goals, our values, our dreams should be shared. The beloved and I should be facing in the same direction and heading out into the richness of life together. Isn't that, in a way, what God had in mind when creating us?

I admit, the creation story in Genesis is our way of creating God in our image, as much as it is the other way around. It's people who are telling the story, and so the human authors make God seem reasonable by human standards. When God does decide to speak, the first word isn't beloved, as you might imagine. It's be--or is, the most useful verb of all, the invitation to existence--followed by the curious choice, light.

SO LIGHT NOW "IS." LIGHT HAS BEING. GOD TURNS ON THE light to begin the divine workday. It s a wonderful choice, when you think about it. If God is ultimately after a beloved, first God will want to prepare a place to bring this significant other. Don't we first acquire a house and make it a home and polish everything up before we bring our beloved home to dinner? We want the first welcome to be perfect. Day by day, as God prepares the world, each new aspect of it is declared "good" or "very good." I suppose what's "good" to God is darn near perfect to us.

Light, God's eldest daughter, is joined by other children: firmament, water, land, plants, celestial spheres, birds, cattle, fish. It's an entirely pleasant world, and in the anthropocentric understanding of the narrator, the whole point of creation is for humanity to have a home. And in the beginning, for a brief moment in time, it was all good. Love and the beloved are together at last!

Tragically, however, like so many relationships, things aren't perfect for long. Like all of the carefully crafted objects of our affection, the one created in God's own image somehow mutates into someone strange and unrecognizable. This is heartbreaking. We can only imagine what it's like in heaven when the divine heart breaks.

In the beginning was the Word. It's important to remember this phrase is not found in Genesis. Rather, it's the first line in John's gospel, which opens with a retelling of the creation story through the lens of Christian revelation. The writer of John agrees that everything began with a word, and the result of this word being spoken was light in the darkness. But how different the story sounds as John tells it. Light is not simply God's first word; in a sense, it's the last and only word. In John's story, God's eldest daughter, light, is literarily transfigured into God's divine Son.

IT'S THE ONLY TRANSFIGURATION STORY YOU GET IN JOHN'S gospel, by the way. He's the only one of the four evangelists who doesn't accompany Jesus and his three friends up the mountain for that full-body-halo effect. Nor does he have to since he alone among the gospel writers has chosen to start his story with the bold identification of Jesus as divine Word--first, last, and sufficient word, no less. If you're waiting for God to speak again, don't hold your breath.

And if you're also waiting for a Christmas story with Mary and Joseph and angels and shepherds, you're reading the wrong gospel. John also skips the Nativity, the Baptism of Jesus, and any mention of bread and wine at the Last Supper, to name a few signature moments in the Christian story. He's not being careless, nor is he rewriting history. He is actually being very careful to tell us about the true origin and identity of Jesus--more true than the circumstances of his historical birth and life.

This reminds me of an old movie they showed us in parochial school called Jesus B.C. In the movie, Jesus, his sister Grace, and their Dad--a very cool ensemble Trinity--are watching earth from some cosmic perspective, in much the same way Dorothy watches Auntie Em in the crystal ball. They discuss the activity of salvation history as it happens, reporting it play-by-play: a lovely creation unfolds, followed by a disastrous exercise of human freedom. The stories of the Bible peel off in turn as the cast of earthly characters multiplies. Finally Grace says it's time, and Jesus plunges into the story himself.

By now you may be wishing I'd sent the photo with everybody wearing matching sweaters. But I think this is a neater picture to ponder: the Word made flesh, a binding word spoken between the lover and the beloved. I like to think of myself as the delight of God's eyes, even if no one else does!

And here's my Christmas present to you: my hope that you believe God loves you in the same passionate way.

ALICE CAMILLE, author of God's Word Is Alive! (Twenty-Third Publications) and contributing author to Christmas Presence (ACTA Publications).