Repentence

Repentance. What associations does that word have for you?

Confession? Sorrow? Guilt? The need for forgiveness? Does the thought of it make you feel bad? Push you away?

It's a word we hear all the time at Lent -- a call to repentance. We hear it echo through the words of John the Baptist. Repent.

It sounds worse that giving up chocolate. A whole lot worse.

But read this quote -- I found it in my email this week from Sound Bites:

True repentance begins with the felt knowledge that we are loved by God… Repentance consists not so much in flagellating ourselves over our "failures" as in courageously and painstakingly reorienting our priorities, unlearning old patterns, turning our faces, like the sunflower, toward the dawning of the light of God. Wendy M. Wright in The Vigil: Keeping Watch in the Season of Christ's Coming

Perhaps we would be better if we left behind our pre-conceived notions of repentance and just considered it a turning toward the light, out of the darkness.