What gives love meaning?

It's ironic almost oxymoronic that love is given meaning by opposites.

Think of it no grief, no sorrow the absence of a sense of loss, emptiness are only felt when love or deep friendship are compromised. But you would never be able to identify love without them. In so many ways love makes us vulnerable it gives rise to empathy, self sacrifice  all sorts of emotions that play no part in the selfish, pitiless, unconscious process of the new atheist, materialistic philosophy.

Talking about love as being from the heart is purely metaphorical. Love is metaphysical it lives in our consciousness it doesn't reside in any physical organ it is not essential for life and yet without it life is totally empty. It is the other side of the same coin as beauty. A blessing that is built into existence but one without any explanation by way of a naturalistic process. And yet it what makes us unique. At the big bang there was energy and matter but also love. In nature everything is there for a purpose the falling dominoes of life are all cause and effect.

We breathe in order to survive, we eat to nourish our bodies, make money to buy possessions drive a car to get from A to B and so on love gives us peace, joy, meaning it too is there for a reason whilst it opposites serve as a warning that it can be taken away. But there is one love that is timeless and imperishable the love of God. There are signposts to the divine and love and beauty are the clearest and evil the exact opposite the absence of God. We experience love and it opens a road we travel down aware of the barbed wire of suffering on either side. Once we taste love we crave more until we choose to pass to enter the door where perfect love and peace wait on the other side.