The teacher Russia let go

One · What happened

Four years in custody, and a release announced across a table

A Russian court sentenced Stephen Hubbard in 2024 to almost seven years. He is a retired schoolteacher from Michigan who served in the National Guard and the Air Force. He was captured in Ukraine in 2022. Russia accused him of manning a checkpoint for mercenaries, a charge his family rejects. His family had little contact with him through all of it.

The release was announced on Wednesday during a meeting in St. Petersburg between Putin and Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy. Trump wrote on Truth Social that there was “no ‘swap’ necessary for this release” and that Russia acted “out of respect for President Trump.” Witkoff told Putin, “Because of you, he’s going home to his family.” Hubbard, who is in poor health, was expected to be flown to Texas for treatment at a military hospital. The State Department had formally ruled him wrongfully detained.

Five days before the release, Trump ordered a waiver of some Russia sanctions, and members of Congress, Republicans among them, criticized it. “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that,” Witkoff said. On the South Lawn Trump answered the critics, “If I would have done that, you would not have Mr. Hubbard coming back.” Admirers of the administration see a prisoner won home by hard bargaining after more than four years in custody. Its critics see a price paid to Moscow. The waiver and the word “humanitarian” will be argued in Congress for weeks by people better placed to judge them than a reader with a phone.

Two · What it is doing

The thanks a reader audits before he is glad

“Humanitarian,” Steve Witkoff’s word for Putin, reached readers in the same news cycle as Hubbard’s name. A reader who admires the administration feels a win and starts defending the envoy’s wording before he has taken in the hospital in Texas. Another, who distrusts the administration, feels suspicion and starts pricing what Moscow gained. Each reader has handed the first minute of his reaction over to a side before he has asked after the man himself. A seventy-four-year-old man’s four years drop to the bottom of the order.

Contempt follows. One reader sneers at the members of Congress who criticized the waiver, as if they wanted a teacher kept in prison, and another waves off Witkoff’s defenders as people who would excuse anything. Hubbard, held for more than four years, has almost no part in either sneer. His family, who had so little contact with him through those years, have no part in it either. A third reaction belongs to readers with a stake of their own. As many as ten other Americans, some of them dual nationals, remain in Russian custody, CBS News reported. A reader whose brother or son is held somewhere, in a foreign prison or a county jail, can feel the headline as a door that opened for a stranger and stayed shut for his own. The ache is grief with some envy mixed in. Real gladness for Hubbard can sit in the same chest.

Three · Where the ground is

Two homecomings in Luke and Acts

Jesus told of a father who threw a feast for a son who came home (Luke 15:22–28). The older brother heard the music from the field and asked a servant what it meant, then refused to go in. His complaint was a ledger. By his count he had served the father for years and never been handed a young goat to share with his friends. The father came out to him and said, “It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:32).

The prayer meeting at the gate

“Earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church,” Luke wrote of Peter’s night in prison (Acts 12:5). An angel brought Peter out of the prison that night. He walked to the house where many were praying. A servant girl named Rhoda knew his voice at the gate and was so glad that she ran in and left it shut. Peter went on knocking while the others argued with her. “You are out of your mind,” they told her (Acts 12:12–16).

Anyone who has prayed for a prisoner or a missing person may find his own gladness arriving late and mixed with disbelief. The people in that house were in the same position. Luke records that the church prayed while Peter sat in prison and was astonished when the answer knocked. Scripture does not tell the reader why the gate opened in St. Petersburg this week. Solomon wrote that “the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).

The Son who sets free

“Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin,” Jesus answered Jews who had believed Him and who told Him they had never been enslaved to anyone (John 8:34). Anyone whose gladness for a stranger waits on the thanks being assigned correctly is wearing a small chain of that kind. Hubbard is headed for a hospital in Texas. His seventy-four years need the freedom the Son gives, the same as any reader’s years. In the same conversation Jesus said, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).

The commands that name no side

“If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together,” Paul told the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 12:26). The verse has no clause about who arranged the good news. A pastor can find out this week whether anyone in the congregation has a person held in a jail or a prison. Paul closed his letter to the church at Colossae with a request written in his own hand, “Remember my chains” (Colossians 4:18).

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Hubbard’s next weeks belong to his doctors and his family, so the jobs left for everyone else are small and close by.

1. 01

   Tell the one who disagrees with you that you are glad.

   At work or at church, find somebody who reads the sanctions waiver differently from you. Tell him you are glad a seventy-four-year-old teacher is going home to his family, then stop. The psalmist wrote of captives coming home, “When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream” (Psalm 126:1).

2. 02

   Write to a prisoner through your church.

   Get from your pastor this week the name of someone in a jail or prison with a tie to your congregation. Find out what the facility allows, then write a full page. Put your name and return address on it and mail it before Sunday. Jesus has the King in His parable say to the righteous, “I was in prison and you came to me” (Matthew 25:36).

3. 03

   Ask your pastor to put the still-held on the prayer list.

   Before Sunday, ask him to name the Americans still held in Russian custody, as many as ten by the reporting, and the families waiting on them. A psalmist’s line fits the prayer, “The LORD sets the prisoners free” (Psalm 146:7). The verse names no date for any of them.

4. 04

   Mail a card to a household that is waiting.

   Pick a family on your street or in your congregation that is waiting on somebody, a soldier overseas or a son in prison. The card needs two handwritten lines and your name. Leave Hubbard out of it. Solomon wrote, “Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country” (Proverbs 25:25).

5. 05

   Sit with an older member of your church for an hour.

   Call one of the oldest people in your congregation, at home or in a care facility. Ask when you can come and plan to bring nothing but an hour of listening. Moses recorded the command, “You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man” (Leviticus 19:32).