What is it with Lent?

It will soon be Lent, and I've been busy writing prayers and material for the season. But it did make me think yesterday 'Just what does the average churchgoer actually think the season of Lent is for?'
No doubt most folk would place Lent before Easter and rightly surmise that the two were connected. They might think it's about temptations (particularly those of Jesus) as there is the tradition of giving something up we enjoy for Lent. But is that all it's about - temptation and giving up?
It was when I was listening to a sermon podcast this morning while taking the dog for a walk (!) that it reminded me that Lent should be about a whole lot more - much deeper and more serious than giving up chocolate for a few weeks.
The preacher, at Mars Hill Bible Church (check them out on iPlayer) had as his text Matthew 5 and those two headings of Murder and Adultery - not the most comfortable of subjects for a preacher to share with a congregation, but he could get away with it because he was visiting!
His point, and here I precis a 35 minute sermon, was that we are all murderers and adulterers. Maybe I precis his words a little too well, and need to expand a little!
What he said was that every time we are angry with someone, every time we pass judgement on someone's actions or words, every time we look at a pornographic image, every time we lust after anything (even pushing our own ambitions and dreams of success onto the lives of our children, and taking them into places that they are not happy or comfortable) then we are guilty as charged by Jesus' own words.
OK, there's a bit of Jewish hyperbole (deliberate exageration) in Jesus' words to emphasise his point, and the preacher was doing the same, but it certainly focussed my mind on what is at the heart of Lent, as far as I am concerned, and that is not so much the problems that Jesus had with temptation but simply the state of the human heart.
That's a problem that's been around since the dawn of civilisation and has been at the centre of God's revealing plan of salvation ever since. It is why Jesus walked this earth and journeyed to the cross and beyond - so that our evident guilt might be forgiven and we be brought back into fellowship with God. Put yourself in the place of the Prodigal Son who led a wild and sordid life in the city before his downfall and eventual return home to his Father. Are we any better?
Lent should be a time to focus our minds on the Easter story, but it should also be a time to examine our hearts.