Interesting post. I would like to raise some questions and points to you as a skeptic. First of all, I do not subscribe to any religion containing the Biblical God, so therefore I am not fully informed on this topic. Please correct me where you see fit.

I have been told that if you do not "believe" in God, it is impossible to ascend to heaven. No matter how many good deeds or how great you are as a person, if you do not put your faith in God, it is simply impossible. This seems contradictory to the statement you raise:

He promises to work out even the biggest disasters for our ultimate good. However, God does not need anything from us, not even glory.

It is arguable that he will not force us to follow his teachings, but banishing us, despite being good people, seems threatening in itself. I frown upon this requirement to enter heaven. Once again, I do not follow biblical teachings so please correct me if this is not within it's compass.

Quoting you once again,

Although we can be confident in the big picture – good wins, evil is defeated – we learn from the Bible that the details of the future are not set in stone.

When? When does the big picture arise? Will it be in my lifetime? Or will I be part of the sacrifice to fulfill this big picture? I'd like to bring the Omnipotence Paradox into this discussion (which you can read about more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox). Now I know this does not fully turn your argument against itself as you've pointed out that God lets us make poor decisions as well as suffer the consequences. But if God were truly good, and truly omnipotent, why let us suffer? I think your statement here:

because it means that God not only cares for us, he also respects us as individuals enough to allow himself to be vulnerable to the consequences of our poor choices.

is a good response to what I said. I understand the respect as individual part. However, I am having difficulty understanding the care portion. I do not equate respect with care. Would you let your child go through all the hardships we face if we could prevent it? We would not have to starve, feel pain, or stress. But, we do. So in contrast, this is not a truly comforting thought to me.

I have no intention to attack your faith and beliefs, and I apologize if I did. However, I feel this is an interesting topic. Once again, I do not have all my facts straight about Biblical religions, so please correct me if I got anything wrong. Thanks for the post.