Time, Hope, and All Souls, by Stephen P. White

God, whose love is infinite, loves a finite number of people. He may love everyone, but the number is still finite.

I read somewhere that the total number of human beings who have ever lived is estimated to be somewhere north of 100 billion. That’s a lot of humans. How one estimates such a number is somewhat obscure to me, but if we take that number as reasonably accurate, it means that something like seven or eight percent of the people who have ever lived are alive today.

This somehow strikes me as vaguely disconcerting – like the feeling one gets the first time one realizes that the years one has already lived probably outnumber, or at least balance, the years one has left to live. Not that such things are really ours to know – neither the day nor the hour – but it’s just less worrisome to be, as it were, driving around on a full tank. It gives one terrific peace of mind. ….