Book Stack Chronicles: The Heart of a King

(Originally Posted May 7th, 2019)

You guys. I have developed a new love. This love is deep and I don’t think it will be waning any time soon.  It is a love for Christian fiction; particularly Christian Biblical Fiction.

Before you ex out of this stay with me a minute. I have dabbled in this world a little bit in the past, but like many Christian women, I think I decided somewhere along the way that it was not as God honoring to read fiction as it is to read non-fiction. I just need to tell you that I was denying myself a really beautiful opportunity to connect with God more deeply. I was denying my imagination the opportunity to dream about spaces and places the people, not just characters, the real flesh and blood people of scripture walked. Is everyone in the book a historical person? Not always. However, many of their pages are filled with the words straight from  Scripture and the dialogue is often laced with the memories of history.

Through a Divine string of events, I literally stumbled upon author Jill Eileen Smith via our local library. I LOVE how Jill takes stories that we may think we know and then breaths life into their bones so that we may be able to more fully appreciate their narrative and the activity of God in their life. It is fiction in the fact that we have no way to know every detail of who these people were and how they lived, but the God they served was the most real thing that has ever been and ever will be.

Her newest book, The Heart of a King: The Loves of Solomon is a fascinating look into who this mysterious man may have been and it gives an opportunity for us to wrap ourselves in the garments of the women who were part of his colorful life. 

Solomon was the son of King David, he was known in history as the wisest man in the world, and he was ordained by God to build His temple in Jerusalem. And yet, at the end of Solomon’s life, he declared in the book of Ecclesiastes that so many things in this life are “Meaningless.” How did he get there? How did he fall so far from the place the appointment the Lord had placed on his life? We can hear the longing in his voice as he penned the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, but what filled his heart in the days before? Jill takes a beautiful approach at trying to process his journey as well as the journeys of the women who were part of his life. In each of Jill’s books, she brings the places that matter so much to our Christian history and splashes paint onto them so we might find ourselves standing in the Temple, or at the entrance to the Tabernacle. I am so grateful that the Lord led me to her work and that He has illuminated my faith in a whole new way through her gifts she is sharing with the world.

Her beautiful book debuted on April 30th and is available on Amazon other re-sellers! I cannot suggest this one enough.

Y’all, get used to these sort of posts… my repressed book/history nerd is LOVING this.

*Just FYI, if you purchase the book from the link used above, I receive a small commission from Amazon. Thank you for your support! I hope it blesses you. xo