This may seem a rather sombre and hopeless poem for New Year's Day, but it reflects very well the reading from Ecclesiastes 3, and intentionally asks the questions without prescribing immidiate answers. You may well have people in your congregation who feel this way as the year comes full circle - and there will certainly be thousands of people outside your church door who echo these sentiments. The reading could be accompanied by prayer, or allow for a time of reflection on our fears for the coming year. You would probably want to follow this with a sense of New Testament hope for purpose in Christ.

Excerpt from the poem:

Is there a purpose to all this?
Time comes around and goes around,
we are born and we die.

We plant food and we pull it up again, we grow it, we waste it, we eat it.
We fight and get injured, we kill and we hurt,
we patch ourselves up and hope to heal.
We break things down and we rebuild them,
we tear them down and build again.
We laugh and we cry, we mourn and we celebrate...

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