“There are 72,519 stones in my walls. I’ve counted them many times.” Edmond Dantes says in the Movie The Count of Monte Cristo. “But have you named them yet?” Abbe Faria asks Edmond in reply. Numbers were invented by humans to try and make sense of a world that is too big for our brains to contain. But God does not need to shrink anything down to abstract numbers to fit it into His head. He is all knowing. He does not need to count each of His creations because He has created and given each of them a name and knows them inside and out. “For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them.” (Moses 1:35). If God were to walk into a crowded Football Stadium, He wouldn’t think to Himself, there are eighteen thousand people here. He’d think, there’s Mary, and Jason, and Briana and Will, and on and on for all eighteen thousand people. “For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are dall things, and we by him.” (1 Corinthians 8: 5-6). We call our Heavenly Father the One God because there is only one of Him, but also because He is the God of the One. Jesus Christ is the One Shepherd because He doesn’t have a flock of one hundred sheep, He has one hundred flocks of one sheep each. That is why He can leave the ninety and nine to go after the one, because that sheep isn’t one small part of a bigger flock, but is a flock unto itself. When Jesus Christ visited the Americas, He didn’t talk to a faceless crowd of twenty-five hundred people. “And it came to pass that the multitude went forth, and thrust their hands into his side, and did feel the prints of the nails in his hands and in his feet; and this they did do, going forth one by one until they had all gone forth, and did see with their eyes and did feel with their hands, and did know of a surety and did bear record, that it was he, of whom it was written by the prophets, that should come.” (3 Nephi 11:15). He met with each of them one by one. He loved and cared for and gave equal, undivided attention to each One, one by one. God asks us to love Him with all of our heart, might, mind and strength, because He loves each of us with all of his heart, might, mind and strength. He holds nothing back. He does not divide His time or His attention or His love between His creations. The Lord explains it like this, “Behold, I will liken these kingdoms unto a man having a field, and he sent forth his servants into the field to dig in the field. And he said unto the first: Go ye and labor in the field, and in the first hour I will come unto you, and ye shall behold the joy of my countenance. And he said unto the second: Go ye also into the field, and in the second hour I will visit you with the joy of my countenance. And also unto the third, saying: I will visit you; And unto the fourth, and so on unto the twelfth. And the lord of the field went unto the first in the first hour, and tarried with him all that hour, and he was made glad with the light of the countenance of his lord. And then he withdrew from the first that he might visit the second also, and the third, and the fourth, and so on unto the twelfth. And thus they all received the light of the countenance of their lord, every man in his hour, and in his time, and in his season— Beginning at the first, and so on unto the last, and from the last unto the first, and from the first unto the last; Every man in his own order, until his hour was finished, even according as his lord had commanded him, that his lord might be glorified in him, and he in his lord, that they all might be glorified. Therefore, unto this parable I will liken all these kingdoms, and the inhabitants thereof—every kingdom in its hour, and in its time, and in its season, even according to the decree which God hath made.” (D&C 88:51-61). All things are one before God not because He is so high above us that it all gets reduced to a single, undistinguishable blob, but because God only cares about the One - the one sparrow, the one lily, each in its own hour and in its own time. We can have confidence that if we are reaching out to our Heavenly Father, He is not listening to our heartfelt pleas with half an ear, trying to somehow weigh which prayers are more worthy of His time and attention. When we reach out to Him, He only has eyes and ears for us in that moment, because we are One, and we are His.
