Parkland, Florida is a bedroom community. That means that Parkland itself has very little in the way of business and industry that would make it a city, but its population is large because people who work in the nearby cities, such as Fort Lauderdale and Miami and Hollywood, Florida, choose to live in Parkland. Away from the violence and congestion and traffic of the cities. When we lived in Florida, 1970s and 1980s, I was an assistant pastor, but I also ran an auto parts store in Hollywood, Florida. We were just a little south of Parkland, which at that time was mostly orange groves. The western edge of Parkland butted up next to the Everglades National Park. At that time, it was farm country, although a greatly different type of farming than we have here in the North and Midwest.

          Today it is a community of just over 30,000 people. That is startling to me. My father had come to South Florida to live with Marsha and myself and had gotten a job in construction operating a bulldozer. Surprisingly to me, he was very good at his job and became very well known in construction circles. He learned the construction trade during WWII in the South Pacific while building air fields under fire while serving with the Navy SeeBees. Marsha and I were just about to go back to seminary when my father called me up one night and asked me to come to his new job sight the next day. He told me it was in Parkland and I needed to see it. I got there around nine and he drove his dozer over. Hundreds of acres of orange trees surrounded us. He told me it was his job to push them all down so they could begin a planned community. It had been sold to a developer. Now it is a city, of sorts. Lots and lots of houses. There is a Walmart, of course. There is a CVS, a grocery store and a Starbucks. Seriously, that is it. The rest of the community is houses. It is only twenty minutes to Fort Lauderdale, fifteen to Hollywood and forty five to fifty five minutes to Miami. People live in Parkland. That’s it.

          The people who live there, live very well. The average household income is over $131,000 a year. Canals were put in with a back and forth and twisting way so that over half the homes are on the water. The average price of a home in Parkland is $596,000. Of course, the cost of living there is higher. For me to live at the level we live at now I would have to make $71,000 a year. But even so, that is still $60,000 less a year than the average salary. I only found one church in Parkland, but there might be a couple more. The church stats for the city says that 25% attend some church somewhere, so that would mean 7,500 of the people attend somewhere. Certainly not in that one church, though. It is pretty small.

          In amongst all those houses is a high school. It was at this high school a 19 year old kid shot thirty one students (mostly) and teachers during a fire drill. As I write this, seventeen have died. The others are wounded and there may yet be another death or two. It is a horrible thing. Of course, immediately there were calls for more gun control from the liberal side and calls for allowing school guards to carry firearms. It is like the politicians wait for these things to happen so they can get revved up. But what it is really about is that people were shot and over half died.

          You hear on the news or get the phone call at your work that there has been a shooting at your teenager’s school. You race to the site, terror gnawing at your belly. The place is surrounded by the police. You finally find an officer who looks like he has some authority and you ask about your child. You are shifted around and finally someone takes you aside and tells you that they have just found the body of your daughter, the light of your life. That morning, as you left your home on the water and drove through the quiet, uncongested streets of your refuge, life seemed pretty good. Good salary, good neighbors, great kids, reasonably happy marriage. Yes, the good life. Now, your good life has just been sucked away.

          How do you deal with that?

          See, it is not just the funerals, which we will all see on TV and the internet. It is not just the political firestorm that will be played out. It is not just the next few days that all of it will remain on the front of the media. There are Moms and Dads and brothers sisters and grandparents and, in the case of the adults killed, spouses whose lives have suddenly gone sour. Even for the wounded ones, life has changed forever. How do you deal with that? And there is another aspect. The second leading cause of death among teens is suicide. Suicide often happens in the wake of the death of another teen or teens. We will not hear of that all the way down in Parkland, but it is very likely to happen.

          I tend to look at these things with two sets of eyes. First, I am a parent. The horror of the situation is unimaginable. Death happens and parents lose children. But, a pointless, violent death? Random, sudden. Down there they get hit by the occasional hurricane. Imagine, during the hurricane of last year you sat with your family in the safest place in your home or evacuation center as the wind howled and the rain pounded. Your kids sat between you and your spouse as the two of you offered them a sense of security. They trusted you to protect. But here, you were helpless. Away at your job or whatever. And your child died. That will not go away in a few days.

          Second, I am a pastor. I know those people will need help. Spiritual help and comfort. Someone they can scream at and talk with and be held while they cry. It will not go away in a week. Grief is a very long walk in a very dark wood. There are counselors one can go to, of course. Thirty minutes a visit, $150 a visit (if you are lucky) and they won’t pray with you nor will they introduce you to the Great Comforter. You’ll be handled just like the case studies in grad school told them to handle you. In a place like Parkland, where only 25% attend any type of worship center, who will see to those families? Thirty one shot, so thirty one families affected. Eight families of that group say they go to worship somewhere. Let’s say they are being truthful, that they go more than just Christmas and Easter. Are those eight worship centers ready for this? Do those worship centers all have the comfort and grace of Christ with them as they reach out? Of course, the answer to that is no. Maybe two or three of those worship centers……. But, those people might have lived close to their church at one time. Now they have moved somewhere else. Not much of a choice close by and Sunday morning is such a good time to tee it up or walk down to the canal behind the house and do a little fishing or drive the ten miles to the ocean. I am thinking that most, if not all, of those families are emotionally devastated today and have no Spiritual resource to call upon.

          Through the eyes of a parent and through the eyes of a pastor, I hurt deep within.  How will they deal? When some goofball from CNN or Fox walks up to their door with a camera crew in tow and asks if this is the worst moment of their lives, how will they deal?

          But you know what? Our society has systematically removed God from our lives, from our government and from our schools. Even from our churches. We have, in the process of removing God, removed morals and ethics. We have, in the process of removing God, removed respect and discipline. God, choosing not to force Himself on us, has left our society. We are on our own, now. Horrible things like this will continue. Even those of us who still hold to the ways of God have been tainted. We don’t raise our children in the ways of God, we don’t curb our own hypocrisies, we only walk the Path when it is convenient, we read our couple of verses a day and pry on the run. We have brought this horror down on ourselves.

          How will we deal with this?