The rock on its journey.

Los Angeles has a new rock star. It’s a rock – a 340-ton granite rock that was unveiled Sunday as a featured sculpture taking up permanent residence at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The artist, Michael Heizer calls it “Levitated Mass” because of it’s imaginative display which includes a 456-foot-long groove that runs beneath the 21-foot-high boulder making it possible for visitors to walk completely under the boulder and view it from the bottom against the often blue southern California sky.

This particular rock star became famous because of its 106-mile journey over 11 days in March from a quarry in Riverside to its new home. The journey was notable for the sheer size and weight of the cargo, and the challenges that had to be overcome in simply transporting it to the museum. Along the way it was met by growing crowds of fans.

Regardless of what anyone thinks of it as art – and I’m not even sure what I think of it as such yet – I love the idea and the end result. The end result is something God made on display in the middle of what man has made. Some have said it makes the whole city, which can be seen in the background, seem “fragile.”

“Art is made to memorialize time,” said the artist, making what many consider a rare appearance in light of his more recluse reputation. “A culture is known by its art, not by its science.” Only in this case, it is God’s art that is being showcased and I think that is grand.

I can already tell that you have to be there to experience it. Photographs don’t do it justice. They don’t convey its size and weight. In a photograph, it looks like a little rock in front of a building. Up next to it – preferably underneath it – I’m sure is a different story. Something tells me God is probably getting a kick out of this.

I can’t help but also think that I go backpacking in the High Sierra’s where the terrain is strewn with thousands of boulders like this one, some of them the size of mountains. And I love to sit on them and marvel at the view, where, for as far as the eye can see, there is nothing human beings have made. That’s an eye-full of God’s magnificent art just waiting to be enjoyed.

[Note: There will be no Teleconference Study tonight. We will announce new study and time as result of our survey soon.]