(160 words)
Love in scriptures is often defined as loyalty to a covenant rather than something emotional. Emotion is important, but when you put it above the principle of loyalty it creates a distortion. The distortion is reinforced by the lies this world likes to tell.
Through loyalty, and through covenant, man can fulfill what God has to give. This requires effort because all things in the world are prone to disloyalty, they tend to fall apart and break up into their individual components and so they die.
The Created as opposed to the Creator tends to follow his own selfish, divisive path, and then the love that is unity and whole is broken.
God is the only way to stay whole, that is to stay alive. God is love and the way to it. This path is expressed in a unique and supernatural way when we practice loyalty in love, and loyalty in a covenant.