Divine Presence and the Cost of Sleepwalking: A Reflection on 1 Timothy 1:1-7, Luke 19:37-44, and Luke 1:26-38
Paul begins his first letter to Timothy by identifying himself as an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope. This isn’t casual self-introduction—it’s theological foundation. Paul grounds his authority in God as Savior, a title the Old Testament reserves for YHWH alone, and Christ Jesus as hope, the focal point of all human longing. Then he moves immediately to warn against certain persons who occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the divine training that is in faith.
What’s the connection? False teaching, Paul says, produces vain discussion—people desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions. They’re performing knowledge without encountering truth. They’ve confused information about God with transformation by God. And the result is predictable: speculation rather than divine training, intellectual posturing rather than the descent into the heart where actual change happens.
This is the first form of missing the visitation: substituting theological performance for genuine encounter.
Now turn to Jerusalem. Jesus approaches the city, and the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen. They’re awake—at least partially. They’ve seen something, recognized something. But Jesus doesn’t join the celebration. Instead, when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.
The tragedy isn’t that God failed to visit. The tragedy is that the visitation happened and Jerusalem didn’t recognize it.
Jesus continues: The days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation. This isn’t arbitrary punishment. This is consequence—the structural result of refusing to wake up when reality itself comes knocking. Jerusalem had spent centuries preparing for Messiah, studying prophecies, maintaining Temple worship, performing religious devotion. And when God actually showed up—walking their streets, teaching in their courtyards, healing their sick—they missed it entirely.
Why? Because they were looking for the wrong thing. They wanted a warrior-king to overthrow Rome, not a carpenter’s son teaching about the Kingdom within. They wanted spectacular validation of their tribal identity, not the disturbing invitation to radical transformation. They wanted God to fit their expectations, not the terrifying freedom of encountering God as He actually is.
This is the second form of missing the visitation: demanding that divine presence conform to your categories rather than letting it shatter them.
And here’s where the Annunciation—Luke 1:26-38—becomes the counter-pattern, the demonstration of what recognition looks like. The angel Gabriel comes to Mary in Nazareth and announces the impossible: You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High. Mary’s response isn’t theological speculation or performance. She asks one honest question—How shall this be, since I have no husband?—and then, when the angel explains, she offers the words that change everything: Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.
Notice what Mary doesn’t do. She doesn’t demand that the angel prove his credentials through endless verification. She doesn’t retreat into speculation about how virginal conception fits with Mosaic law. She doesn’t perform theological knowledge to demonstrate her worthiness. She asks her honest question, receives the answer, and says yes. She recognizes the visitation and makes space for it in her actual life, not just her conceptual framework.
This is what Paul’s calling Timothy toward when he warns against myths and endless genealogies. The false teachers aren’t wrong because they’re studying Torah or tracing lineages—those things matter. They’re wrong because they’ve turned study into performance, trading the terrifying intimacy of divine encounter for the safety of theological speculation. They’re doing exactly what Jerusalem did: creating elaborate religious structures that insulate them from actually meeting God.
And here’s the deeper pattern that Advent reveals: God’s visitation is always concrete, always particular, always now. Not in your concepts about incarnation, but in the incarnation happening in front of you. Not in your theological system explaining divine presence, but in divine presence disrupting your ordinary Tuesday. Not in speculation about how God might show up, but in recognition when He does.
Mary demonstrates the stance required: receptivity without passivity, surrender without abdication of intelligence. She asks her question—genuine inquiry, not performance or test. When she receives the answer, she doesn’t demand more proof. She makes space. Let it be to me according to your word. This is faith as existential yes, not intellectual assent to propositions. It’s the difference between knowing about pregnancy and actually conceiving, between studying maps of Jerusalem and walking its streets, between discussing transformation and feeling your life reorganize around divine presence taking up residence in your actual body.
Jerusalem’s tragedy was having all the right information while remaining asleep to what was actually happening. They knew the prophecies by heart—Bethlehem, house of David, mighty works, the coming Kingdom. When Jesus arrived doing exactly what the prophets described, they couldn’t see it because He didn’t match their interpretation of the data. Their theology became the barrier to recognizing God, their religious devotion the insulation against divine encounter.
This is what Paul’s warning Timothy against: knowledge that deadens rather than awakens, study that produces speculation rather than divine training. The phrase Paul uses—divine training that is in faith—carries the sense of household administration, the ordering of a life around something real and present. It’s not learning about God’s household; it’s participating in it, being formed by actually living there. The false teachers have traded participation for performance, presence for propositions, the terrifying freedom of genuine encounter for the safety of endless discussion.
And here’s what makes Advent the perfect lens for reading these passages together: the Nativity is the ultimate demonstration that God’s visitation happens in the ordinary, the overlooked, the places we’re not watching. Not in Herod’s palace but in Bethlehem’s stable. Not announced to the Sanhedrin but to shepherds in night fields. Not to the religiously accomplished but to an unmarried teenager in Nazareth who said yes without knowing how the story would unfold.
The days leading to Christ’s birth and the days of His earthly ministry teach the same lesson: divine presence doesn’t wait for you to finish your theological system before showing up. It arrives unannounced, often unrecognized, always demanding response. The question isn’t whether God visits—He’s visiting now, always, in the charged matter of creation, in the voice of your soul you keep ignoring, in the beauty that arrests you, in the suffering that breaks you open. The question is whether you’re awake enough to recognize it.
Jerusalem wept because centuries of religious preparation couldn’t substitute for present recognition. They knew everything about Messiah except how to see Him standing in front of them. Paul warns Timothy against the same trap: don’t let theological discussion replace the divine training that comes from actual encounter. Don’t let performance of knowledge substitute for transformation by presence.
Mary shows the alternative: Ask your honest questions, then make space for what arrives. Let it reorganize your life. Let it be to you according to the word spoken—not according to your interpretation, your system, your safety. The angel didn’t come to inform Mary about incarnation theology. He came to invite her participation in incarnation itself, the impossible made actual in her body, her life, her daily reality.
This is what Advent calls you toward every year: recognition. Not more information about Christ’s birth—you probably know that story by heart. Recognition of the visitation happening now. In the ordinary moments you’re sleepwalking through. In the beauty you’re too busy to notice. In the pain you’re working so hard to avoid. In the voice of your soul whispering what you don’t want to hear. Christ isn’t waiting in the past (first-century Bethlehem) or the future (second coming glory). He’s present now, always arriving, perpetually being born in matter charged with divine life—if you have eyes to see it.
The tragedy of Jerusalem—they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation—isn’t just historical. It’s the perpetual human temptation: to study the maps instead of walking the streets, to perform theology instead of encountering God, to protect yourself from transformation through endless speculation about how transformation works. Paul’s warning to Timothy is warning to us: don’t let knowledge become barrier, don’t let religion insulate you from what religion is supposed to facilitate—actual meeting with actual God in your actual life.
And Mary’s yes is the pattern: receptivity, honesty, willingness to let divine presence reorganize everything without knowing how it will unfold. Not passive—she asks her question. Not blind—she listens to the answer. But then: surrender. Let it be. Make space. The Word doesn’t become flesh in your concepts about incarnation. It becomes flesh in you when you say yes to the visitation you didn’t plan, the presence you can’t control, the transformation that shatters your safety.
Jerusalem missed the Kingdom because they were too busy defending their interpretation of the Kingdom to recognize it arriving. The false teachers miss divine training because they’re too occupied with speculation about divinity to encounter the Divine. You miss the visitation when you’re so focused on knowing about God that you can’t see God actually showing up in the beauty that stops you, the pain that breaks you, the love that terrifies you, the call you keep ignoring.
Advent is the annual reminder: God visits. Now. Always. In matter, in ordinary life, in your body, in this moment. The question isn’t whether the visitation is happening. The question is whether you recognize it. Whether you’re awake. Whether you’ll say yes.
Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.
That’s the stance. Not speculation, not performance, not theological defense. Recognition and surrender. Making space for what arrives. Letting divine presence reorganize your actual life, not just your concepts about life. The consequences of missing the visitation aren’t arbitrary punishment—they’re structural reality. When you sleepwalk through the moments where God shows up, you miss the only life there is. You build elaborate structures of religious knowledge that collapse because they were never grounded in genuine encounter.
But when you recognize the time of your visitation—when you say yes to what’s actually happening instead of defending what you wish were happening—everything changes. Not because you figured out the theological system, but because you let Reality itself, incarnate and present, remake you from within. That’s what Mary did. That’s what Jerusalem refused. That’s what Paul’s calling Timothy toward. That’s what Advent invites you into every year: not more knowledge about Christ’s birth, but recognition of Christ being born now, here, in you—if you’ll say yes.
The Greater Horizon 