A wise man once quipped, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." I would like to add, less cleverly, that where you start out is no easy indicatorr of where you may end up. Like the hood guy who was a dead-ringer for Omar Epps, a football star, and all the ladies loved him later becoming strung out on drugs once those football dreams didn't materialize. This story is not about him.

I knew a guy growing up that was a few eggs short of dozen, if you know what I mean. He had a series of unfortunate events that left him motherless and aimless. One particular instance stands out with this fellow, bear with me.

In the 'hood, we love to look out of windows. Everything is so huddled together – the buildings, the people, the lives. Privacy is compromised and a strange collective is formed whether you want it to or not. So the guys on the block had a clique, every collective has a clique. This guy in particular did not belong.  I was looking out of my room window that faced our little side street that always attracted the guys in the neighborhood.  I witnessed this guy walk up to these men only to be publicly ridiculed and told abrasively to go away.

I watched this fat, lisp-having, Baby-Huey of sorts tuck tail and march back to his own porch. Too make a long story short, he ended up with a windfall from that series of unfortunate events. Overnight, this guy and his hood status changed.

He became, The Man. He then became the drug dealer's, Man. He then became that drug dealer complete with a mean streak, a veritable 'Debo' of our corner of the hood. It was a strange phenomenon to behold. The once ostracized 'Baby-Huey' had become the Goliath of hoodum.

A wise woman once said, "A fool and his money is soon parted." So you know how this saga ends. The guy ends up broke, hood status vanishes, friends disperse and gold-digging baby mommas' have moved to the next prospect.

I recently got an update of said young man, he is a regular church goer, working and doing fine.

How does that happen? I call it the power of God.

Sister of aforementioned football playing, Omar Epps knock-off was once the fastest little thing you could name. Sweet person but lost in a sea of men and bad examples.

Where is she now? An evangelist preaching the word of God. She is actually the person that gave me the website that appears in my Word for the Day module on the upper-right hand corner of my blog.

From my corner of the hood, the list goes on and on.

I say all of this to say, it doesn't matter where you start in life, you never know where you may end up. You can't pick life's winner's and loser's on face value alone. The single power that I am aware of that has frequently shown the ability to change lives that dramatically is the power of God.

I know this may seem preachy but, for some reason, I really feel it needed to be said.