I must point out though that we as Christians do not believe that the entire universe was created for our benefit for, as you say, that would be arrogant and preposterous.

The Scottish Xians?

We rather believe, at least those of us who have thought about it, that the entire universe was created by God in order to bring glory and honor to Himself.

So, god is a show-off? For a supposedly perfect being, god sure does have a lot of failings. I don't see why a perfect being would need to show off or bring glory and honor to himself. Shouldn't a perfect being have maximal glory and honor? How does this bring glory and honor to god anyway?

You see we can not understand why God, being so BIG, would love man who as you say is nothing really. It goes beyond our human minds, just like the sheer vastness of the universe blows our minds. Yet God's love is just as real as the beautiful, vast universe that is all around us.

How do you know that's true then?

God crafted and designed the universe to show his power and glory and to show, just as we are infinitesimally small, He is astronomically huge.

So why does this god then choose to reveal itself only to a parochial little middle eastern tribe who at the time had no concept of the true vastness of its "creation"? Why choose as a method to do this a flawed and ambiguous document which subsequently became so bowlderised few people agree on its original meaning? and why not put a bloody great signature on this masterpeice somewhere where we can all see it so there is no doubt which deity's responsiblity it is?

Over 8000 years ago Hinduism proposed

Quibble - Since nobody was writing things down that long ago, I wonder what basis you could have for claiming that was a Hindu belief then or that anything that could reasonably be called Hinduism existed that long ago.

Is a bit misleading. Within a section of extreme Judo-Christian belief systems this may be the view. However, there are other trains of thought in religion that does not hold this view. Furthermore, there is no reference in the Bible that God only cares about life on earth.
WIthin Hindusim, I am hard pressed to think of any sect that shares the view you ascribed to religious thinking. In fact, central to Hindusim is the belief in other worlds with Beings, that God (the Supreme Being) cares about. Over 8000 years ago Hinduism proposed the existence of an infinite number of universes, create from the Mind of Maha Vishnu in an instant.

It is a much more difficult and challenging prospect to do the right thing in this world when faced with the realization that we each are less than an atom of a molecule of a microbe on a grain of sand on an infinite beach, than it is to do the right thing because we are supposed to follow precepts of religion and society (many times the same thing).

Um, why, exactly?

As for vast spaces and connecting, there is a repeatable experiment in quantuum physics that goes something like this: If you split a quanta of light, you get two equal and opposite quanta. One spins one way, the other opposite. One is "positive," one is "negative," etc. The fly away from each other at the speed of light in opposite directions. Here's the spooky part... If you influence one in any way, the other reacts INSTANTLY (no time lag no matter how far apart they are) in the opposite way. In other words, if you tickle one, they both laugh. Hmmm... FTL may be impossible, but what is happening here? No one knows, but it sure makes me think there is more than one way to connect, and emphasizes the idea that we are all connected, and what we do affects everything.

Just some thoughts...

I for one believe God has a plan for the entirity of the universe, to include the microscopic dots on a microscopic dot that we are.

If believing were enough to make it so, I'd--right this instant--have my own Beer Volcano, instead of having to wait for the afterlife, like every other schmuck.