Fruit of the Spirit

TOPIC #1 - the Fruits of the Spirit

I can not speak the phrase without the image of a flannel board, the discussion of fruit and vegetables in Sunday School, and the absolute zero application it had on my life as a child. When I recite Galations 5:22-23 "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control", I also have an image of a watermelon, an apple, and at least a handful of grapes or a pear. How can I put that to death and raise this idea up instead:



"How can you say you love God whom you don't see when you don't love your neighbor who you do see..."


I searched for love at google and found wikipedia to be the first result saying: "Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection." As CS Lewis has said somewhere: [paraphrased] 'there is something amiss when the expression that I 'love' strawberries does not delineate from the fact that I 'love' my wife or 'love' God...'

For the next couple days I will be frantically trying to answer the question: What is love?