I visited 2 very different construction sites today, on a whim. Two sons of one of my clients each were working a different site, and we just went by to see what was going on.

The first site is a new 9-story office building in Clayton, MO, a financial center near the center of the country. The son was applying fireproofing to the steel structure, much like you may have seen in 9-11 WTC documentaries. It was fun to ride up the external cage elevator on a breezy January morning and watch concrete sprayed onto the steel, to take a look around, staring down the open elevator shafts and the stairwells still missing stairs, to feel the wind in an office building with just cables between me and the precipice.

Then we went to the other son’s site, where a 2 story residence was being constructed in an old neighborhood. We were just in time to help raise the first external wall up on the second story. I rarely do that, generally preferring the George Jetson style of gainful employment.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with politics and economy and faith? Try the notion of distance from an issue, of perspective. From the points of view I had today, I’d say the building trade is thriving. People are hard at work putting up new buildings all over. Compare this to the national housing starts (down). Were you aware that the Empire State Building was built during …