I’M MELTING!!!

Romans 11:34  “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?”

It took me forever to figure out why the Wicked Witch of the West hung out with a bunch of flying monkeys as opposed to regular humans…… well as “regular” as humans can be in Oz anyway.  I kept thinking it was because she was so evil and monkeys just don’t have a moral compass.  Then it hit me.  The Wicked Witch of the West can’t bathe!  That’s not offensive to monkeys.

But it would be very offensive to most of us.

 

The fact that the Wicked Witch of the West dissolves in water seems pretty odd.  And I guess it is odd.

However, the fact that you and I DON’T dissolve in water is more of a miracle than you might imagine.

In his book, “Nature’s Destiny”, Michael Denton illustrates just how amazingly fit for life our universe is.  Although an agnostic, Denton is very outspoken in claiming that the universe has all of the appearances of being designed for life.  He even goes so far as to say that it has all of the appearances of being designed for life like us………… humans.

He says that the processes of life would have to be performed in a liquid medium.  Few would disagree.  Solids are far too inert to allow the chemical processes and reactions that are necessary for life.

 

Gases would be far too volatile.

 

A liquid medium is necessary.  The demands on that liquid medium are vast, necessitating a nearly perfect medium.

Enter water.

 

Dentin discusses how water’s thermal properties alone, including latent heat, specific heat, thermal conductivity and expansion and contraction properties make it unique.  Beyond that, water’s surface tension, density, viscosity and non-Newtonian characteristics place it in a category of fitness unapproachable by any other liquid.  And the list continues even beyond those.

But today I want to speak of yet another characteristic of water that make it the matchless medium.

The universal solvent.

Water could have no biological role if it was not a good solvent.

Lawrence Henderson, professor of biological chemistry at Harvard said, “It turns out that, as a solvent, water is indeed ideally fit.  So much so that water approaches far nearer than any other liquid to the alkahest, the universal mythical solvent of the alchemists.”

Nearly all known chemicals dissolve in water to a slight, but detectable extent.  It also catalyzes almost all known reactions.

Although quite reactive it is not as reactive as other liquids.  Many acids and alkalies will dissolve substances almost insoluble in water in a matter of seconds.  But these acids and alkalies use themselves up in the process by reacting with the solutes.

Water could not fulfill its biological role if it was either a highly reactive fluid like sulfuric acid or if it was an entirely unreactive fluid like liquid argon.  Henderson says that “water is ideally fit for both its biological and its geological role.”

                                          WATER IS NEARLY PERFECT!!!

 Nearly…… but not quite.  Water cannot dissolve lipids, or fats as we call them.

And that’s why the Wicked Witch of the West melted when Dorothy poured water on her.  She was just too skinny.  She needed to put on some fat.

Amazingly, every single one of our cells, be they muscle cells, bone cells nerve cells or whatever, are surrounded by a cell membrane that is tri-layered.  The membrane has lipids on the outside and lipids on the inside.  The lipids on the inside keep water in the cell where it belongs.  The lipids on the outside keep the water outside the cell where it belongs.

We are 70% water yet we stand erect, we run, we lift objects.  We are pretty much a giant bag of water, or more precisely millions upon millions of tiny bags of water that all work in concert with one another.  Yet we don’t dissolve ourselves from the inside.  And I thank God every time I go swimming that I don’t dissolve myself from the outside.

That’s why you don’t see witches at the beach.

One last thought.  How did a cell with this tri-layer form?  Did a cell membrane “empty bag” form first and somehow got filled with a nucleus, mitochondria, ribosomes, etc. and of course water?  Or did the nucleus, mitochondria, ribosomes etc. just form in water all in a clump and were “engulfed and sealed up” by a membrane that was floating around in the area?

God only knows!!