Cutting Firewood
“Firewood heats you three times. Cutting it, stacking it, and burning it.”
Practice
Be aware of winter needs. Identify neighbors on fixed or limited incomes and prioritize providing firewood as a practical way to ensure their homes stay warm.
Serve your neighbors physically. See the physical work of cutting, hauling, stacking, and storing wood as an act of love for your neighbors.
Collaborate with community. Look for congregations or local nonprofits who organize cutting and delivering firewood.
Practice proactive generosity. Consider how this embodied act can inspire other tangible ways of caring for your neighbors each winter.
Fireplaces served as the primary way to warm homes during the winter before boilers, furnaces, and space heaters. For generations, there was a rhythm of preparation established by cutting wood for the winter. Wood cutting remains an embodied way to love our neighbors in our modern age. The labor of cutting, hauling, stacking, and storing firewood demands sacrifice. It is a physical and practical act of caring for our neighbors each winter.
Firewood is an important way to provide heat for neighbors who rely on fireplaces or wood-burning stoves. For those with fixed or limited incomes, increasing utility bills are a real liability and source of anxiety. Firewood is not just for ambiance or aesthetic; it is an essential and practical way to endure the winter.
Cutting firewood is a tangible way churches care for families in many Colorado mountain communities. Volunteers from several faith congregations in Buena Vista collaborate every year to cut firewood each winter for their neighbors. Each October, men from the Baptist, Anglican, and Nondenominational congregations spend a Saturday cutting and delivering wood for those in need across Chaffee county. Closer to Denver, Conifer Community Church has had a wood cutting ministry since 1997. They host an event where over 100 volunteers come together in partnership with local businesses to process over 50 cords of wood in a single day. For these mountain congregations and the neighbors they serve, wood cutting is a communal activity of blessing.
The work of cutting firewood is proactive and preparational. The practice of cutting firewood is caring for families and homes by providing the resources they will need for the winter. Although many people in our cities do not rely on firewood to heat their homes, proactive ways of caring for our neighbors apply to every neighborhood. Considering the practice of cutting firewood is an invitation for us all to look for practical ways to prepare and care for our neighbors each winter.
