According to a story I once heard, a man needed his house repainted – and he wanted it all painted red.

It just so happened that the painter the man hired was a real cheapskate, and only bought one can of red paint. He figured he could paint the whole house with it, watering it down as he went.

Nearing the end of the house, he noticed he was running out of paint, so he thinned it down even more, finally covering the whole house.

The only problem was that by the time he reached the end, the paint was thinned down so much that it was more of a pink than a real red. But since this was on the back side of the house, the painter figured it wouldn’t matter that much.

The next day, the owner of the house came home and took a look at it. At first he was pretty impressed – until he saw the back wall of the house, which was almost all pink.

In a rage, he called the painter to come over, and demanded to know why the back wall of the house was pink.

“I was running out of paint,” the painter explained, “and figured I could stretch this can out and not have to buy a new one, if I just thinned it a little bit.”

Looking at the painter angrily, the owner said, “That’s not good enough. Repaint, and thin no more!”

I tell this story for a reason – it’s Lent, and this is a season of repentance. It’s important, therefore, to understand what repentance really is.

While there’s nothing wrong with periodically abstaining from relatively harmless indulgences (meat, chocolate, etc), giving these things up doesn’t really get to the core of what Lent is about.

What if, instead of abstaining from things we intend to indulge in later, we looked at Lent as an opportunity to turn away from things we really should give up altogether?

What if, instead of giving up meat or chocolate for Lent, we tried giving up lust, or greed, or jealousy, or any number of other harmful things that have gotten a hold on us?

This, I think, would get us closer to the real meaning of Lent. It’s a season of repentance, and repentance doesn’t mean giving something up temporarily – nor does it mean feeling sorry for our sins (in fact, such sorrow is completely pointless unless it leads to real change)!

The word “repent” comes from the Greek metanoia, which literally means “to change one’s thinking.”

We repent of our sins, then, when we think about them differently – when we see the damage they are doing to us and to others, and we make a decision to walk away from them.

But the repentance of Lent goes even deeper than that – leading us not just to change our minds about sinful habits, but about life in general. It challenges us to live as if the gospel really is true – as if we really believe that God loves us enough to die for us and rise again, so that we can walk in newness of life.

This, then, is the meaning of Lent – it’s a time to reflect on the death and resurrection of Jesus – and by extension, on our own death and resurrection.

How much might the world be changed, if we who call ourselves Christians really believed these things, and acted as if they were true?