And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.

- 1 Kings 8.10-11

The snowball fight at Six Flags over Georgia was cancelled because of snow.

Organizers at the amusement park meant to sponsor a mighty battle involving a thousand patrons using fake snow. Then it snowed. It snowed so hard that it shut down the park. The real thing swamped the imitation.

King Solomon spent serious time and treasure to build the temple in Jerusalem, fulfilling the great dream of his father David. The Jews viewed this edifice as an earthly model of God's true throne room in Heaven. Every action taken in its precincts conformed to the Lord's commandments and conveyed symbolic truth about the true glory of the Almighty. The king assembled a cast of thousands to enact a stunning picture of the heavenly reality.

Then the real God appeared with such power that He drove the surrogates from the scene.

Sunday after Sunday the church gathers to offer analogue adoration which reflects the heavenly court. Some attack the assignment with more resources, some with less: a robed choir lifts soaring music skyward, backed by the serried ranks of a powerful pipe organ - or an upright piano tinkles out a tune as a few dozen voices drone out a hymn; a rockin' band belts out the latest in praise songs, or a terrified teen quavers his way through a tremulous tune; a polished pulpiteer limns God's goodness in choice vocabulary - or a bivocational pastor offers hard-won truth assembled in his few off-hours. These differences don't matter all that much; as the great R. G. Lee once said, when we reach Heaven, all earthly praise will sound like a bumblebee in a fruit jar.

What would happen if God's presence engulfed our practised praise? What if a real blizzard of glory snowed our preparation under? Would we welcome the arrival of all that we sought so diligently to portray, or would we grumble that God's interruption made our hard work meaningless? We should accustom ourselves to the idea. Revelation 15.8 says that even in the true temple in Heaven, when God's glory gets going even the angels must duck and cover.

This Sunday, let's pray that the reality of God utterly outstrips our best efforts and buries us in a blizzard of blessing. Then let's run out of church, eager to shout to everyone we meet the good news about what we've seen.

For more on this story, see Fake Snowball Fight Cancelled because of Real Snow