My son and I spent a challenging hour on Thursday fitting its bits together and attaching the net.

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Now it stands proud, awaiting the arrival of my two grandsons, aged seven and nearly four.

I’m not expecting either of them will become professional footballers.

But I do hope this great game, along with other sports, will instil in them values that help them grow into good and capable adults.

Assembling the goal felt like a statement of that hope.

Hope for a world where children can play happily and safely, and not just in my back garden.

A world where they can grow up in peace, gaining in strength, skills and confidence.

A world where love is stronger than hate, and where violence and aggression are not the pathway to victory.

These are the same values that underpin the hope which lies at the heart of Easter.

This week, hundreds of millions of Christians, in countless churches across the continents, have been remembering how Jesus was betrayed by a friend, falsely condemned at a hasty trial and executed in the most brutal way the Roman army could invent.

‘My prayers will be for everyone who needs hope’

It must have felt to his followers as though evil had won the war, that sad Friday afternoon.

Yet, early Sunday morning Mary finds him alive and well in a garden, and rushes off to share news that would change the world for ever.

Today, Easter Day, we gather in those same churches, and in our homes, to celebrate his triumph.

A triumph that gives me, and so many others, hope.

The date of Easter may move about from year to year, but in Britain it always falls in spring, the season that speaks most strongly of hope.

After the past 12 months, we need that more than ever.

Yet it’s hope I’ve seen in the volunteers I’ve met at food banks in Rochdale and Salford.

They have been helping neighbours who are struggling to cope with the massive hike in the cost of food and fuel.

I’ve seen it at a Christmas gathering of Ukrainians in Manchester, as their home country works to resist the Russian aggression assailing their homeland.

I saw it recently in the face of a young woman training to be a vicar in my diocese, herself a refugee.

She has a safe new home in Britain and a new-found faith, one that helps her inspire hope in others.

So this week, when I’m working off those Easter egg calories in the garden with my grandsons, my prayers won’t just be for them but for everyone who needs a fresh outpouring of hope today.

And I will thank God for those who bring us hope, whoever they may be.