Who is Jesus?
Jesus had 12 very close friends who all had different jobs and families. They travelled, ate, laughed, chatted and enjoyed life together. Jesus loved people very much, and he wanted to show them who God was.
So he went to different places with his friends, and he helped people by healing them, raising people from the dead, feeding people, and lots of other miraculous and wonderful things. He also taught people about how God wants us to live, and said that if people had seen him, then they had also seen God. Basically, he was saying, “I am God!”
There were some people who really didn’t like that, because they thought, “There’s no way a man can be God. We have to punish him for saying these things.” So they plotted to arrest and kill him.
What happened after he was arrested?
Jesus was innocent – he hadn’t done anything wrong. In fact, he had just loved people! But the crowd were suddenly shouting for him to be killed.
The Romans were in charge at that time, and the way they killed people was by crucifixion. They nailed the person to a wooden cross and left them to suffocate to death. If the death took too long, they would break their legs to speed up the process. It was horrible (and it’s where our word ‘excruciating’ comes from!) The Romans were very good at their job, and they made sure everyone they crucified definitely died.
So, Jesus was crucified. (They didn’t need to break his legs, though.)
His death
As he was dying, he called out to God, “Why have you abandoned me?” He said this because he was suddenly separated from God. We actually deserve what Jesus went through, but he chose to take the punishment for us, which meant that he experienced all of God’s anger and had to be separated from him.
This separation was so severe that when he died, there was a huge earthquake, and the sky went completely black in the middle of the day for about 3 hours.
His resurrection
Remember how Jesus healed people and did other miracles? It’s because he is God. He was so powerful that he just couldn’t stay dead! So on the third day, he came back to life! He didn’t stay separated from God or his friends.
Friends with Jesus
Jesus (who is God) wants to be friends with us too. He has done all the hard work by dying and coming back to life, and now he just asks us to believe and follow him!
(You can read the whole Easter story in the Bible here.)
Easter Egg Trail Map
Well done for finding this egg! Have you found the others? (There are 9 in total.) Here is the map! To help you out, the roads are Brooksby Rd, Overdown Rd, Cotswold Way (x2), Fairford Rd, Fulbrook Cres, Norcot Rd, Skilton Rd, Ullswater Drive. But we won’t tell you the house numbers… that would be too easy!
