Jesus Bible stories for kids

Start with The Angel Gabriel Visits Mary, four quiet minutes in Nazareth in which an angel's first word is rejoice and Mary's last is yes. The Birth of Jesus follows her to Bethlehem, where the town is full and the baby is wrapped in strips of cloth and laid in a manger, and it gives your child the name Immanuel, God with us. The Shepherds and the Angels is the same night out in the fields: one angel, then a whole sky of them, and a sign that turns out to be a baby in the animals' food box. Simeon and Anna moves a few weeks on, to the temple in Jerusalem, where a man who was promised he would see God's rescuer finally holds him. The Wise Men Follow the Star closes the set, with travelers from the east, a worried King Herod, and a star that stops over one small house. It is the longest of the five at about six and a half minutes, and the only one with a parent note.

Then Jesus grows up. The Baptism of Jesus begins with a happy surprise: Elizabeth's long-awaited baby is now John, a man in scratchy camel's hair calling people back to God beside the Jordan River. When Jesus wades in, the heavens open, the Spirit comes down like a dove, and a voice says this is my beloved Son, before Jesus has done a single miracle. Jesus Turns Water into Wine follows him, his mother and his first friends to a village wedding in Cana, where the wine runs out, six stone jars of washing water are filled to the brim, and only the servants know where the good wine came from. It is his first sign, and his disciples believe in him.

The next four stories happen on and around one lake. Jesus Calms the Storm finds him asleep on a cushion in the back of the boat while the waves come over the side, and ends with his friends asking each other who this is, that even the wind and the sea obey him. Jairus's Daughter begins as the boat bumps back onto the shore: a synagogue leader begs Jesus to come to his very sick little girl, a woman who has been ill for twelve years touches his cloak in the crush, and in a quiet room Jesus takes the girl by the hand and says Talitha cumi, girl, get up. Then he tells her parents to give her something to eat. Jesus Feeds the 5000 takes a boy's five barley loaves and two small fish up a grassy hill and finishes with twelve baskets of leftovers. It leads straight into Jesus Walks on Water on the same night, when Peter steps out of the boat, starts to sink, and is caught by the hand. This time the friends in the boat have an answer to their question: you are truly the Son of God. The storm and the walk on the water both carry a note for parents, because both are loud and wet and dark before they are calm, and so does Jairus's Daughter, because the girl dies before Jesus reaches the house.

The Good Samaritan, The Parable of the Lost Sheep and The Prodigal Son are stories Jesus told, and each is told here with the question or the grumbling that made him tell it. A lawyer asks who his neighbor is and gets a road to Jericho, a hurt man and the one traveler who came right where he was. People complain that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them, and he answers with a shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to find one sheep, and then with a father who runs to hug a son before the son has said a word. The phrase moved with compassion turns up in both the Samaritan and the father, and The Prodigal Son points it out. The Prodigal Son ends where Jesus ended it, with the father outside his own party, pleading with the older brother.

Jesus Blesses the Children and Zacchaeus put him on the road to Jerusalem. In the first, the disciples try to send the little ones away and Jesus takes them up in his arms, the way Simeon once took him up in his. It is the shortest of them all, at under three and a half minutes. It ends heading for Jericho, where Zacchaeus is waiting up a sycamore tree to see a man who already knows his name.

Jesus Raises Lazarus is set in Bethany, a village just outside Jerusalem, where Jesus loved Martha, her sister Mary and their brother Lazarus. Lazarus dies before Jesus arrives, and the story stays with the grief long enough for Jesus himself to cry. Then he thanks his Father, calls Lazarus, come out, and Lazarus walks out still wrapped in his grave cloths. It is for five and up and carries a note for parents.

The last four are Easter. Palm Sunday brings Jesus into Jerusalem on a borrowed colt nobody had ever ridden, over a road of cloaks and branches, while the crowd shouts hosanna. Jesus Washes the Disciples' Feet is a supper a few days later, with a towel, a basin, Peter saying never, and a new commandment to love one another. The Resurrection of Jesus says in a few gentle sentences that Jesus died on a cross and that he gave his life because he loves us, then spends the rest of its time on Sunday morning: a stone rolled away, an angel sitting on it, and Jesus meeting the women on the path with the word rejoice, the angel's first word to Mary at the very start. Doubting Thomas ends the set behind locked doors a week later, with my Lord and my God, and a blessing for everyone who believes without seeing. The Resurrection of Jesus and Doubting Thomas both carry a note for parents. All twenty-one are published here in full, every one has a free audio preview, the memory verse, discussion questions and a prayer, and The Birth of Jesus is free to hear in full in the app.