This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Oct 21, 2025
This past week, thanks be to God, 20 hostages that had been abducted by Hamas have been released. Their captors starved them and for a long time it was unclear if these people were even alive at all. These poor people have been held in captivity for 2 years and most of them were released in emaciated condition. They clearly had not been treated humanely and had not been fed on a regular basis.
If you are not filled with great joy that these people have been released and returned to their families, then you are a bad person. I don’t care about the politics involved, if you can not find it in your heart to be thankful that the captives have been set free and returned to the people who love them, then you have a very hard heart.
I went and read a brief profile on the 20 hostages that were released. Only 2 of them had any connection to the military. That means that 18 of the 20 were civilians. Even if they were all soldiers, no one should be treated the way these people were treated. Most of these men are civilians who were abducted in front of, or in some cases, along with, their families. These were not enemy combatants, these were people who made the mistake of living in the wrong place at the wrong time.
You can have whatever opinion you want to have about Israel, Gaza, Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump or anyone else involved. My heart breaks for the 2 years taken from these poor people as well as all of the lives that have been lost in all of this fighting. As of the writing of this article, we are not quite 48 hours into this peace agreement and there is video surfacing of Hamas executing people. There has to be a better way.
A little closer to home, it has been incredible to watch politicians who have had nothing to do with the release of these hostages do all they can to not mention President Trump in any statement they make. For years these people have screamed about atrocities in Gaza. More progress has been made in this conflict in the past week than at any time in recent memory and all of those voices now go strangely silent.
The world had a chance to recognize what a monumental achievement this was because the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded late last week. If they could not bring themselves to give it to President Trump, then give it to someone else involved in this peace agreement. Instead, they gave it to a woman named María Corina Machado for her work in Venezuela to promote democracy and help move that country away from a dictatorship to a democracy. I am grateful for what she has done, even though I had never heard of her prior to 2 days ago. She dedicated the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to President Trump because even she believed the release of these hostages deserved worldwide recognition. This gracious and humble gesture speaks very highly of her character.
Thank God these hostages are coming home. The politicians can bloviate about it all they want now, the bottom line is the captivity of these people is over and I am thankful. My prayer, as always, is for peace in our world. I pray that the parties involved in the conflict between Israel and Gaza will also both desire and pursue peace.