Love is the Principal Existence of Priority. Priority Of Alternatives is that by which a person makes choice of which alternative to choose if they must select one and leave other alternatives unselected. Love is the Priority Of Alternatives of God's Heart. Love is the Principal Existence of Priority itself, so that Priority exists as an element of reality.
It is because God prioritizes Love over all, that Priority itself exists at all. Just as all other things exist because God Exists and Acts in certain ways, God's Existence and Action originally and eternally instantiate all fundamental realities consistently without ceasing. It is by this that properties exist, which can be rearranged into forms that God did not instantiate—this is to deviate from The Way of God which brings upon creation disorder and death.
Love is the objective top hierarchical Priority. It contains, orchestrates and (in their time and place and manner) grants authority to all other priorities. Priorities exist in a hierarchical structure, each lower priority appealing to higher priorities for their credence, legitimacy and authority to act as grounds for decisions and choices.
This is the essence of "putting first things first" and why "putting second things before first things" as C.S. Lewis remarked loses both first and second things.
Love, uninhibited and ceaseless Love (seeking the Good and wellbeing of)(Love is a verb) is the top level priority, uncontested in its primacy. When Love as it is, is inhibited or otherwise unable to be directly satisfied, its authority is passed to hierarchically lower priorities. It is only in this way that lower priorities have authority.
It is because of this that when the higher priority can (often by the pursuit of the hierarchically lower priorities) be directly satisfied, that the hierarchically lower priorities lose their legitimacy, value, credence and authority as grounds for decisions.
All behavior is grounded in the authority of some priority to claim the attention and resources. Without consciously attending to priority, we are acted upon by priority unconsciously and become as a tool for God's ongoing pursuit of Love—either in ways which stimulate recognition within that unwilling participant, or in others, or in both, so that recognition can make way for acceptance and therefore Love can have His Way and make Good and wellbeing for that one.
This is the Love of God; that He loves what is unlovely so that He is unwilling to destroy it, but that He is also unwilling to leave it any less than perfectly Lovely. Love seeks the Good and wellbeing of the beloved.
Perfect Love is a consuming fire, and drives out all that would stand between Perfect Love and Perfect Loveliness in its object. There is no other force of behavior than this—all is descended from that Prime Priority of God's Heart and all behavior is grounded either consciously or unconsciously on this hierarchy.
This also references how C.S. Lewis refers to first and second things, and how every virtue taken as its own top priority becomes a vice, becomes evil.
C.S. Lewis wrote: "You can’t get second things by putting them first. You can get second things only by putting first things first." When asked whether something was good, he would often reply that the first thing was bettern than some second thing (patriotism as opposed to raw individualism) but that the first thing was worse than a third thing (patriotism as opposed to universal Love). People would sometimes blame him for being evasive and not giving them a straight answer. But this very refusal to give a simple ranking was itself an expression of the hierarchy of priority—searching, seeking, and serving the top priority of Perfect Love rather than forcing a premature end of consideration. In a time and place where universal Love cannot be directly satisfied, it's authority may descend to patriotism. In a time and place where patriotism cannot be directly satisfied, it's received authority may be granted lower still to raw individualism.
Love is not just one of the virtues—it is Virtue itself, Virtue the Original Whole. Love is the Original Whole of Virtue. Virtues now are divided; they are reflections of God's Character, but they are not themselves "whole". They are like shattered glass: each piece fits together, but because it is shattered, the capacity of it to fit itself together and remain whole is lost.
The pattern of the whole must descend once again into the pane of glass, so that the pieces may be orchestrated and become one again. It is not within the capacity of the broken pieces to do so—they all act upon their own nature which is now only a divided memory of the whole.