In your view, the universe is the creation of God?

Yes.

And s/he is in charge of what happens in it?

Let’s call Him “He” just to stick with tradition. Yes, He’s in charge.

Of the whole thing?

The whole thing.

Do you know how many stars there are in the universe?

Lots.

Astronomers estimate anywhere up from 200 billion galaxies in the visible universe, possibly as many as a trillion of them. And those galaxies vary in size, but maybe on average there are two or three or four trillion stars in each.

So that’s maybe a trillion trillion stars.

Yes, at least. Why do you think God made so many?

I don’t pretend to understand God’s reasoning.

But presumably, he didn’t create the rest of the universe just so human beings would have something to look at at night; if it was just to entertain us, he could have hung lanterns in the sky. All those stars must have been created for some role that doesn’t involve Earth.

That certainly seems likely, though we can’t know what God intended.

As far as astronomers have been able to determine, a large proportion of stars have planets orbiting them. Maybe most of them do. But to be conservative, maybe there are 500 billion trillion stars with planets.

So?

And maybe only one in a billion stars with planets has one or more planets able to support life. That would still mean at least 500 trillion planets that, at some point in the billions of years of their existence, are likely to have life on them. I can’t imagine that God, having brought that life into existence, would just ignore it; he must look after it to some extent.

I am confident that God would be benevolent towards all of His creation.

Looking after life forms on 500 trillion or more planets must be quite a chore. Of course, fungal spores, one-celled creatures and the like wouldn’t require much attention. But, on Earth, even if God only looks after humans and ignores chimpanzees and dolphins and whales and other developed creatures, there are something like eight billion of us. If we project those figures onto a universal scale, that’s something like 3 or 4 billion trillion trillion individuals God has to keep track of.

But God doesn’t have to keep close track of every individual. He has made laws that govern how everything happens, so just setting it all going, so to speak, was enough.

But if one of my loved ones is afflicted with cancer or Covid or some other disease that, by the laws discovered by medical science, is likely to kill them, and if I ask God very politely—if I pray—God might suspend the normal operation of those laws?

He might well do that.

So he still has to keep track of every one of those 3 or 4 billion trillion trillion individuals, in case any of them are asking him to suspend the natural laws that mean he doesn’t have to keep track of them?

The Lord moves in mysterious ways.