Sometimes Christians visiting Paris see the newsstands as evidence that this society is far from God.
Certainly, one must get used to seeing breasts and nudity here as you go past the many stands where newspapers and magazines are sold.
But if you watch to see the big advertisements pushing the latest magazines they hope will catch the eyes of passersby, you may notice something else.
Almost every week a new magazine comes out with some spin on faith, religion, etc.
Evangelicals have been a hot topic because of the much publicized faith of George Bush and the influence of evangelicals in his re-election. Here's a recent cover from Courrier International.
The main headline says "Crazy about Jesus" and the secondary headline says "Evangelicals out to conquer the world"
Despite those headlines, the artlicle was actually a pretty fair and accurate look at evangelicals in the world.
Next is the new edition of Non-Stop. The headline this time says "What do people want to believe in?"
It takes a look at all sorts of religions, with interesting facts and side stories about different groups (for example, the booming evangelical gypsy community in France). But it also has stats (79 percent of agnostics live in Asia and 13.5 perecent in Europe, 1 percent in Africa), and articles about the impact of faith in society.
Here's a picture from the aftermath of the tsunami that they ran. Did you see this? It's a mosque in Indonesia that was left standing while everything else was washed away.
I was thinking how quickly we might dismiss this as simply a more solid building than those around it, and then how quickly Muslims would assume it was a divine act. And, how quickly we Christians would assume the divine if this had been a church.
At any rate, these magazines confirm again the extreme interest in faith and spiritual things here. Magazine publishers and vendors know it. They are making money on it and know what sells.
Yet in the church many are still holding onto an idea that people are not interested in God and faith. We say this, perhaps as a way of explaining why these same people don't come to our churches.
We're finding the real problem is that we haven't known how to communicate with people in a way that speaks to them. But that's another story.
If you hear people talking about spiritual death in France and Europe, tell them you've heard another story. And if they talk about the news stands, tell them they need to look beyond the flesh and see what else they see.
Well, just to show that it's not just Christians who might continue to do things in the ways they always have regardless of whether others grasp it or not, here's the little newletter the Communists in the neighborhood were out selling in the market today. 
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