Quotes from The Atonement Child

Francine Rivers ·  384 pages

Rating: (32.2K votes)


“Everyone wanted to be the best. Best student. Best servant. Best Christian. They got caught up in it, pressing and pushing until they forgot whom it was they were trying to please.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“This generation seems to see children as a financial burden and responsibility to be avoided.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“Emotions are powerful, but they also change as quick as the wind. That's why the Lord says to renew your mind. Don't base decisions on what you feel.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“Tell me how on God’s green earth we can dare offer salvation to a dying world when we’re so busy shooting our own wounded.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“How many others suffered in silence, too ashamed and too afraid to speak about their pain? The world wouldn't let them grieve for children they had aborted. How could they when the rhetoric said there was no child? How does one grieve what doesn't exist? No one wanted to admit the truth.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child



“How could a woman who had an abortion not feel guilt or some sense of remorse? How could she justify what she'd done? Whom else could she blame when everyone was telling her it's her choice? Without facing the truth and confessing it, how could she be forgiven Who could she be restored? How could she be free?”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“It doesn't take two minutes on an examining table for a girl to know that abortion is painful and destructive and it'll have far-reaching effects on her life. Besides the emotional trauma of going through something so violent, there are the physical aspects, the aftereffects. Unfortunately, by the time she's gone that far, it's too late to change her mind.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“In Christ, you are His child. You are raised up with Him. You are forgiven. In Christ, you are a new creation, the very temple of the Holy Spirit. You are delivered from the power of darkness. You are redeemed, blessed, holy, and sanctified. Even now, God is holding your child close. And in Christ, you will be reunited in love.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“A woman could be the wind beneath a man's sails or a gale to send him into uncharted waters. She could be an anchor in stormy seas, or she could let him drift into the rocks.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“Jim looked into her tear-washed eyes and saw her anguish. For a moment it was as though he shared a measure of the bitter brew—and felt poisoned. She smiled sadly. “Everything was done properly. The right equipment, a sterile environment. Just like you were saying to Dynah. But it wasn’t all right, Jim.” “What do you mean?” “I couldn’t have children. When Doug and I got married, I wanted a baby more than anything, maybe to atone for what I’d done. Or just because it was always a part of what I wanted. Every time I got pregnant, I miscarried. My gynecologist said it was because of the abortion. Dynah was a miracle.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “You told my daughter everything would be fine in a few days. Maybe, God willing, that’s the way it’ll be. But you know what, Jim? There’s more to it than the physical part. It’s been twenty-nine years, and I’m still not over it.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child



“One person standing on the Rock can throw a lifeline to others drowning in the sea. He”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“We're Christians. We have to care what people think. The appearance of wrongdoing, remember? I'm not going to move in with you had have people think we're living in sin. What sort of witness would that be?”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“He had the tool to break down the walls that imprisoned his people. He had the tool to rip away the veil to the Holy of Holies so that his flock could come before the Lord and be cleansed, made whole, transformed, and have a personal, loving relationship with their creator. That very tool san on Hannah's bookshelf right now, gathering dust until Sunday morning. Her Savior was there, waiting to speak to her and show her the way home again, the way back to love. YOUR WORD IS LIFE! Why didn't more people understand that?”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“that you will know and accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord and learn who you are in Him.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“Lord, you are God! You made us. Who better to know how to fix us when we've gone wrong? who better to set us to rights again? Who better to love us through the fire and refine us into something beautiful and useful despite our wrongs?”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child



“Hormonal changes permanently alter the breast's structure. And when a pregnancy is terminated through abortion, the process is interrupted, which leaves cells in a sate of transition. And they say cells in this state have a very high risk of becoming cancerous. So the woman's chances of developing breast cancer later in life my be greatly increased.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“... those selling abortion don't want them to have [the facts]," Virginia said heatedly. "Besides the Supreme Court doesn't agree with you. They judges seem to think we poor women would fall apart if we knew the facts, so they decided women don't have the right to know the full truth." She shook her head. "They've made it legal to withhold vital information, even when a woman requests it, for heaven's sake!”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“Juan Garcia began putting chairs upside down on the tables. Gathering Mr. Packard’s spoon, cup, and saucer, Dynah watched the old man walk stiffly across the room. His arthritis was troubling him again.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


“A woman could be the wind beneath a man’s sails or a gale to send him into uncharted waters. She could be an anchor in stormy seas, or she could let him drift onto the rocks.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from The Atonement Child


About the author

Francine Rivers
Born place: in The United States
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Popular quotes

“It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal. We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects. And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, quote from Eating Animals


“Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless. In return, their children would not be at all grateful, on the contrary their efforts, however strenuous, would never be considered enough, they would, until the bitter end, be considered guilty because of the simple fact of being parents. From this sad life, marked by shame, all joy would be pitilessly banished. When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned. The physical bodies of young people, the only desirable possession the world has ever produced, were reserved for the exclusive use of the young, and the fate of the old was to work and to suffer. This was the true meaning of solidarity between generations; it was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favor of the one that replaced it, a cruel, prolonged holocaust that brought with it no consolation, no comfort, nor any material or emotional compensation.”
― Michel Houellebecq, quote from The Possibility of an Island


“Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesmen to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it .The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were , with no sense of direction, and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.”
― J.I. Packer, quote from Knowing God


“There are times and places where not to be anyone is more honourable than to be someone.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Prisoner of Heaven


“And what have I invested in interpreting disfocus for chaos? This threat: the only lesson is to wait. I crouch in the smoggy terminus. The streets lose edges, the rims of thought flake. What have I set myself to fix in this dirty notebook that is not mine? Does the revelation that, though it cannot be done with words, it might be accomplished in some lingual gap, give me the right, in injury, walking with a woman and her dog in pain? Rather the long doubts: that this labor tears up the mind's moorings; that, though life may be important in the scheme, awareness is an imperfect tool with which to face it. To reflect is to fight away the sheets of silver, the carbonated distractions, the feeling that, somehow, a thumb is pressed on the right eye. This exhaustion melts what binds, releases what flows.”
― Samuel R. Delany, quote from Dhalgren


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