Our church does indeed believe in recycling and has been earth friendly for over seventeen hundred years.  But we also believe in recycling on a much deeper level, which goes to the heart of what it means to be Armenian Orthodox Christians.  You see we don’t just recycle things, we repurpose them. These vestments I am wearing belonged to another priest and were in a closet left for the moths. They were lovingly resewn and gifted to me by the Kotchounian family and now have renewed purpose. The grand piano in our hall was gifted to us by a man who lost his wife and the player of that piano and was just collecting dust.  He lovingly gifted it to us, and today Haig will bring it to renewed life with Genocide music of remembrance. Taking things which are seen to have little use and transforming them into something very useful and valuable is a special kind of recycling. We usually call it redemption, and it is something our Lord has been doing all along, only God does it with people and not just things. He took a spite filled Jesus hater Saul, and turned him into the greatest Apostle for Christ, St. Paul.  He took a sick and crazed King of Armenia, Drtad, and turned him into the faithful leader of the first Christian nation. He rescued the Armenian people, thrown away like trash by their own Ottoman government, bringing us to new life and prosperity in the Diaspora and independent Armenia.