What is Hope?

Where does it come from? Why do we bother having it at all?

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. All the times when we were pregnant, we always had "hope". Then it occurred to me the other day, that our "hope" has always been selfish.
Our hope has always been about our wants, our plans, our dreams. I have never had hope for the common man, for children without parents, or for the homeless. For all those things, I am always hopeless.
So I realized, have I ever really had hope at all? Isn't hope supposed to be, I don't know, more?
Shouldn't hope be what starts change? The mechanism that allows us to keep going in spite of it all or to start on something we thought was hopeless in the first place. Isn't it meant to be shared and to bring people closer together?

That's when I realized that I had let the Hope God gave me, become something just for us (mostly for me). It is when I realized that I have let the world become the ruler of my life, instead of letting go and letting God.

Now I have decided to turn back to God in this. To ask Him to restore real Hope in me. Not for me or my plans (my wants or desires), for all the stuff in the world that needs Hope. Things that have caused people to need one another to encourage them, and lift them up. To share in the pain and in the overcoming of it.

Today I will ask God to show me where He needs the Hope to be put. Maybe it will be that I need to restore my Hope in what He will do for us and the people I find are in hopeless circumstances. Maybe it will be...something unexpected.