Amazing Grace was one of my Dad’s favorite songs. It never fails to make me tear up when I hear it. There’s something so haunting and beautiful about its message of forgiveness and redemption. A reminder that no one is beyond God’s grace. 

But it’s not a song or sentiment that comes to mind when contemplating the fate of a little girl abducted by terrorists amidst a horrific massacre — one which took the lives of 130 people in her kibbutz alone, including her father’s first wife, who’d helped raise her since the death of her mother when she was two. 

Emily Hand wasn’t a little girl lost. She didn’t wander away from her family. She was an innocent taken and held captive for seven weeks by terrorist thugs. 

But Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar opted to celebrate her return on Saturday by characterizing her plight as that of “an innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned,” as if she’d been accidentally misplaced, not viciously snatched and terrorized. 

Again, we’re taught — and the song reminds us — that no one is beyond redemption. And I suppose that’s true even for those who commit evil atrocities, provided they turn to God and repent. But that doesn’t obviate the need to recognize and call evil out when we see it. 

It seems to me that those reluctant to do so may be a bit lost themselves. 

This “Moore to the Point” commentary aired on NewsTalkSTL on Monday, November 27. Audio included below.