Something goes wrong. Something breaks. Something is missing. Something that was supposed to happen doesn’t.

Who’s responsible for this? We demand accountability. We expect an explanation. We insist on satisfaction, and most of the time that’s a reasonable position.

But we can become buried in our grievances. When life goes awry, when dreams crash into reality, when what we expected to be a sure thing crashes and burns, we look for something — or someone — to blame.

Career stalled? Blame immigrants, blame people of colour, blame those smart and competent women breaking “the glass ceiling,” blame the “old boys’ network.

The world’s a mess? Blame the political party or cultural minority or religious group or government agency of your choice. Blame whatever end of the political spectrum you wish — right, left or apathetic middle. We’re in the place we’re in because too many buy the slick advertising and the manipulative marketing.

We’ve become too accepting, too understanding, too gullible. It’s the fault of the manufacturer, the sales rep, the delivery service. It’s because the doctors, the nurses, the police, the teachers who messed up. Fire the waitress, the printer, the driver, the contractor, the clerk, the secretary, the intern.

But more often than we realize, we’re looking for someone to take responsibility so we can let ourselves off the hook. We find some strange satisfaction in nursing our grievances. There’s an element of control in demanding to know, who did this to us?

At its worst, we become mired in cynicism: We scoff at those who serve the community, we dismiss every public servant as a “hack” or corrupt, we refuse to “waste our time” getting involved in the community because nothing’s ever going to change.

The real problem is that while we look outside of ourselves to place blame, we don’t look within ourselves for taking responsibility for making things right.

To the question of who was to blame for the tragedy of the man born blind, Jesus replies, Nobody. He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. In Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God, everything, even the most painful and debilitating situation can become an occasion in which God’s works can be revealed if we seek resurrection rather than recrimination — but that can’t happen if we nurse our grievances, isolate ourselves in our anger, focus only on finding someone to “blame.”

We all suffer times of pain and hurt and confusion that we have little or no control over. The challenge to us as followers of Jesus is not to seek someone or something to blame but to move beyond our anger and brokenness to transform our “blindness” into holy light.

O God, open our eyes from the blindness of self-centeredness. Do not let us nurse our grudges or isolate ourselves in cynicism, but instil in us the light of your wisdom that we may find your peace and grace in the challenges we face, transforming our Good Fridays into experiences of resurrection.