Made the Iron Float

Made the Iron Float is a 30-day devotional through the stories of the prophet Elisha. It is written for families facing job loss, debt, and money trouble: the worker whose plant just closed, the couple whose credit cards have been covering the gap for too long, the spouse who did not know how bad it was until last week, and the parents, friends, and churches around them.
Elishas stories keep coming back to money. A group of poor prophets go down to the Jordan to cut logs, and one young mans axe head flies off the handle and sinks. "Oh, my master," he cried out, "it was borrowed!" (2 Kings 6:5). Elisha does not scold him or promise him a new axe. He asks, "Where did it fall?" Then he cuts a stick and throws it in, and the iron floats. After that come a small room built for a guest in Shunem, a poisoned pot of stew during a famine, twenty loaves of barley bread before a hundred men, a general too proud to wash, a servant who ran after the money, a city under siege, four starving men who were done sitting at the gate, and a widow who went to the king to ask for her land back.
Alongside those stories runs an original one. Jared Pelfrey, 42, kept the lines running as a maintenance mechanic at a kitchen-range factory in a small Ohio River town in southern Indiana. In January the plant closes. He has a severance check, a truck he cannot afford, four credit cards that have been covering the gap for years, a hospital bill from his sons ruptured appendix, and money he still owes his father-in-law. His wife signs him up, without quite telling him, to meet with Arletta Gaines, a retired bank manager who was widowed at thirty-three with three children and a pile of her husbands debts. Over about thirteen months of Thursday mornings, they read the Elisha stories together.
The six parts:
- The Borrowed Axe Head: saying it out loud, writing down what you owe, and the question "Where did it fall?"
- A Small Room Upstairs: receiving help without shame, what a home is for, and the secrets couples keep about money
- Death in the Pot: food pantries, a sports-betting app, a job far below the old one, and going back to school
- Is This the Time to Accept Money?: pride, quick fixes, debt-relief pitches, and running after money that is not yours
- A Great Famine in Samaria: collectors, running out of benefits, a church that cannot cover everything, and one very dark night
- A Day of Good News: a debt management plan, a new job, a hospital bill reduced, and passing help on
Inside the book:
- 30 days. Every day includes a passage from the Berean Standard Bible, a Mentor and Student conversation, a reflection, "Todays Practice" (one concrete step), a one-line "Lift It Out," a prayer, and journal questions
- Honest: it does not promise that giving or believing will make you rich, that your job will come back, or that your debts will vanish. It does not tell you which debts to pay first or whether to file for bankruptcy. It points you to nonprofit credit counselors, legal aid, tax professionals, and your state unemployment office
- Back matter: practical help (the first thirty days after a layoff, unemployment benefits, health coverage, debt collectors and your rights, medical bills, credit counseling, scams, retirement accounts, bankruptcy, gambling, and where to call), a chapter for families, friends, and churches, background on Elisha and his world, a six-session group guide, and a Scripture index
Jared, Arletta, and everyone in Halcott are invented characters. This is a devotional, not financial, legal, tax, or credit advice. It includes crisis and help-line information for the U.S. (988, text HOME to 741741, the National Problem Gambling Helpline, and 211). Written with the assistance of AI writing tools, under the authors direction. Scripture quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible (public domain). Every Scripture quotation was checked word for word against its source.