Hello,
I am a substance. I’m made up of two elements (hydrogen and oxygen). While it may sound as if I am bragging, I know that there is no substance on this earth that is as versatile as I. In my most common state I am a liquid (water). I make up over 90 percent of the blood of a human being. People drink me to survive, and not having me can kill someone faster than not having food. When people heat up a pot containing me, they can use me to cook food. When I am that hot, I scald people’s skin, so you have to handle me with care. If a person, house or forest is on fire, I am a must to extinguish the flame. People use me to brush their teeth, to wash their faces, and to bathe. When I am in a large body, such as a pool, lake, river, or sea, people swim in me. If someone does not know how to swim, that person can drown in me.
water drop
When I am in a body that is not only wide but also deep, canoes can be rowed, boats can be ridden, and ships can sail on me. Plants need me to grow. Without me all lawns and farms are parched. Much of the earth’s surface is made up of me. When powerful winds push me in an ocean, I become a tropical storm, a hurricane, or even a tsunami, and I can be very destructive. All of this is just for when I am in the liquid state.
When the temperature gets below 32 degrees Fahrenheit or zero degrees Centrigrade, I become a slippery layer or solid (ice). In this state, people drive on me at their peril. People use me to chill drinks that are at room temperature so as to make the drinks more palatable. When I am in this state, people who used to swim in me can actually skate on me on what had been ponds, lakes, and rivers. When I am put in a rink or stadium, people can do ice skating and figure-skating and even play hockey on me.
When the temperature goes above 212 degrees Fahrenheit or one hundred degrees Centrigrade, I become a vapor or steam. This is my gaseous state. In this state I can be used to power engines. Sometimes people use me to fill a room so that people can come into the room to relax. Even wet surfaces–such as lawns, plants, rivers, seas, and oceans—produce me when heated up. In this state, in a process called evaporation, I can rise thousands of feet (meters) into the air. When enough of me has formed in the air, and when the conditions are right, I liquify and fall down to the earth’s surface as showers of rain. People welcome me readily when it had been very hot, for I help to water the lawns and the farms and to cool down the temperature. But when there is too much of me, people complain, for I can make driving conditions hazardous, and I can flood streets, highways and homes, sometimes wiping off entire sections of cities.
A very interesting fact is that sometimes in the winter I can exist in all three forms in the same place at the same time. In a lake, for instance, I can be in the liquid state below the surface, in the solid state at the surface, and part of me can be evaporating into the air (gaseous state)!
Isn’t it amazing that I, the same substance, can be made up of only two elements, can exist in these three states, and can do all these things? If you had not experienced me in all three states, seeing me being manifested and used in all these different ways, I know many of you would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to believe that the same substance can exist in three states and be useful and destructive in so many ways.
You know what? The one who created me was God.
By the way, God exists in three ‘states,’ often referred to as persons—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. At the baptism of our Lord, God manifested Himself in all three persons. John the Baptist, who baptized our Lord (God the Son), dipped our Lord in the River Jordan. The Bible tells us that the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit (God the Holy Spirit) descended from heaven in the form of a dove and rested on our Lord, and at that time a voice came from heaven (from God the Father) saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (see Matthew 3:16-17).
So I ask, why is it that some intelligent people can have no problem accepting the fact that I, the same substance, can exist in the three states referred to above, and that I can do all these things, yet insist that it is impossible for God, who created me, to exist in three persons?