The two areas in which I may claim some expertise (physics and theology) intersect and interact in many interesting ways. I'd like to consider a rather compelling point of intersection. Both of these fields deal with infinity, and the way in which both do so is instructive and interesting.
In Physics, infinity is generally a nuisance. We really don't know how to deal with it. There's a couple of reasons for that. For one thing, you never actually measure anything infinite, so most infinite things contradict reality. Sure, there's "limiting cases," a kind of reality check that we do where we say "as a in our equation gets really big, things should tend to do x, so let's make a approach infinity in our equation and see if things do what they're supposed to," but even then we're not looking at a real, physical situation... a pretty much never gets that big, whatever a represents. But most of the time if infinity shows up in an equation, you either have to explain why the equation doesn't apply here, find your math error, or... well... those are your only options, really. Heck, one of the most powerful and useful theories ever, Quantum Field Theory, was in trouble for decades as people struggled to figure out how to explain away the nasty infinities that kept showing up, eventually settling on a scheme called "renormalization" that boils down to saying "Well, if we just assume that there's an extra negative infinite term to cancel the positive infinity that shows up in our calculations, we can get the right answer and make good experimental predictions." That's right: infinity is such a nuisance in physics that theoretical particle physicists were concerned literally for decades with trying to get rid of it.
At the same time, we love infinity in Physics. It's useful. If something is infinite, everything else is tiny by comparison and can be neglected, so equations simplify. Sure, we know that walls aren't infinitely strong, if you hit them hard enough you can break them, but as long as you're just ramming your shoulder into 12-inch-thick concrete, you can just pretend that its strength is infinite, then the math becomes much easier to make predictions (of course, in the shoulder against concrete example we don't need any calculation to predict that you'll mess up your shoulder if you don't find another way through that wall, but there are cases where intuition isn't quite so wonderful). Still, in Physics there are a lot of things which we can't make sense of if they're infinite, so infinity can cause us a lot of trouble.
In Theology, on the other hand, infinity looks a little bit different. Sure, we still have a hard time wrapping our heads around "infinite" and "eternal," but rather than being a problem which we must solve when it shows up, or at best a reality check, it may be said that infinity is the resolution to many, many problems.
The thing that comes to mind most often for me is my mistakes. I've certainly made them, and in doing so I've certainly robbed myself of opportunities and blessings. Are those things lost forever? Sometimes they're not, but in many cases they are. Then isn't that a problem? Doesn't God want more for me?
Well, yes. He's sad for my disappointments and losses. But at the same time, He sees much greater things for me. Sure, I made a mistake, and perhaps it will make life more difficult for the rest of my life and then some, perhaps in a small way, perhaps in a big way, perhaps the effects will disappear in time, perhaps they won't. However, it simply doesn't matter. The blessings which God plans to give us are infinite. Thinking quantitatively, if we assign some units to happiness and say that some error I make subtracts one from my happiness, even if the subtraction lasts forever, sure, you might say that's a problem, but there's a trick: as time goes on, my happiness goes to infinity, and infinity minus one is still infinite. In fact, even if I make a huge error and subtract a million from my happiness, eventually my happiness approaches infinity and even a million gets swallowed up in the blessings I receive.
I think that this is one of the ways in which the Atonement works. Christ certainly heals and fixes things, but in other things there are still consequences, even long-lasting ones. Some things He hasn't fixed (at least not yet), but does that matter? It's a finite loss compared with the infinite power of the Atonement, so that our afflictions, even while they remain, may be "swallowed up in the joy of Christ" (Alma 31:38). That applies both to our sins and to the misfortunes that we endure through no fault of our own, all are nothing compared to the infinite and eternal glory and power which is through Christ.
Title: 2 Nephi 9:7
