At the end of this sentence, you will see a period. In a spot the size of that period, 250,000 bacteria could fit! WOW! Just imagine how many bacteria and other microbes you could find in your garden. Imagine how many you could find in the ocean. Just one and a half gallons of seawater holds more bacteria than there are people on Earth!

Think about some of the processes that happen in the world. Plants grow. People breathe in air. Old garbage decays. Sometimes we make the mistake of assuming those things just happen. But they don’t. God’s huge host of tiny, working microbes causes them.

Bacteria recycle. Because they do, we can live. Life could not exist without the elements carbon and nitrogen. Carbon is the most important part of plants. Plants give us food. Plants also create oxygen for us to breathe. Nitrogen makes up 78 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere. Bacteria use these elements and others. As they use them, the elements change into forms other living things can use. A world without microbes would be a world full of old, dead things. Microbes break things down—huge things like elephants and tiny things like other microbes.

In the ocean, microbes called phytoplankton get energy from the sun. Bigger sea creatures eat them. Even bigger sea creatures eat those creatures. In the end, almost all creatures in the ocean rely on phytoplankton for food. Phytoplankton also make oxygen. Scientists guess that 80 percent of the oxygen in the world comes from the microscopic sea plants!