I recently heard an interesting story about an elementary aged girl from a non-Christian home. Her Christian friend had invited her to Sunday school, and she desperately want to go. But there was a problem. Her parents didn't want her to attend church. Yet that didn't dampen her desire to go. Early one Sunday morning she got up, dressed before her parents were out of bed, and then knocked on the church family's door to ask if she could go with them.

To me, stories like this show that God has planted an innate desire to know him in every human heart. When children are born into families that make Christ the center, they naturally learn Christian attitudes and behaviors. However, there is evidence of children sensing God's presence, even when they haven't been raised with Christian teaching. The story of this girl's determination to join her neighbors at church is one example of this yearning for God.

In The Moral Life of Children, Robert Cole records his conversations with children (ages ...