A little Muslim girl and a Christian bus driver. That’s where I want to start.
Not at a conference on interfaith dialogue, not in a university seminar room, but on a school bus in southern Indiana in the late 1970s.
No PowerPoints. No declarations. Just a child, a bus driver, and a very practical problem: where do you find halal meat in Bloomington, Indiana?
A little Muslim girl and a Christian bus driver
My guest, Dr. Najiba, grew up as an immigrant girl in southern Indiana. Her parents were graduate students at Indiana University. There were no halal butcher shops back then. If you were a Muslim family trying to keep your dietary laws, you had a problem.
Her father needed a place to perform ritual slaughter—very similar to Jewish dietary law—so that the meat his family ate would be blessed in the way his tradition required.
Enter Mrs. Anderson.
She wasn’t an imam, or a rabbi, or a theology professor. She was the Christian woman who drove the school bus. Somewhere in the ordinary small talk between a five‑year‑old Muslim girl and her bus driver, the subject of meat came up. Mrs. Anderson mentioned she had a farm.
And then she did something very simple, and very profound: she invited Najiba’s father to use that farm so he could perform the halal slaughter himself.
No interfaith panel. No formal memorandum of understanding. Just a neighbor who had a resource, and a neighbor who had a need.
“I have a farm.”
“You need a place to honor your religious practice.”
“Let’s help each other.”
That’s it.
Yet in that humble exchange, I see a living parable of what it means to be created in the image of God, and of what it will take to heal a polarized world.
Interfaith before “interfaith”
When people hear words like “interfaith” or “religious pluralism,” the mind often jumps to high‑minded conversations and carefully moderated dialogues. Those have their place. But Najiba’s story reminds us that interfaith was happening in southern Indiana, on a school bus, before anyone in that town would have used the term.
Sometimes interfaith looks like this:
- A Muslim father trying to keep his dietary laws in a town that doesn’t yet know what “halal” means.
- A Christian bus driver with a farm, a measure of curiosity, and the willingness to open her gate.
- A five‑year‑old girl acting as an unconscious ambassador between two worlds.
Children do this instinctively. They don’t carry the layers of fear we adults accumulate. They talk. They ask questions. And without realizing it, they make introductions that change lives.
Listening to that story, I found myself thinking about my own upbringing. We weren’t strictly kosher, but we observed some of the biblical food laws. I grew up looking at labels for gelatin, because gelatin usually meant pork. Jell‑O was off the table. Literally.
So when I hear about a father in Indiana combing the landscape for a way to keep faith with his tradition, I recognize that tension: trying to honor God in the particular details of life—what you eat, how it’s prepared—while surrounded by a culture that doesn’t know your story.
And then I picture this Christian woman, in the late ’70s Midwest, saying “Yes, come to my farm” to a Muslim man with an unfamiliar set of religious requirements.
It’s not a theological summit. It’s neighborliness.
Quaker hospitality and a Muslim Ramadan
Fast‑forward a decade or so in Najiba’s life.
She becomes the first Muslim student at a small Quaker college in North Carolina. There is no Muslim student association. No on‑campus prayer room. No imam. And when Ramadan arrives, there is no built‑in Muslim community for her to share it with.
For those who may not know, Ramadan is deeply communal. You fast from dawn to sunset—not even water. But the hours that bookend the fast, the pre‑dawn meal and the sunset breaking of the fast, are usually spent with family and community. You don’t just eat; you belong.
Now imagine being 17 or 18, away from home for the first time, and facing your first Ramadan without your family—on a campus where, as far as anyone knows, you are the only Muslim.
The Quaker campus chaplain saw this.
He could have said, “We respect all religions here,” and left it at that. Instead, he did something that has since made its way into the American literature on religious pluralism.
He gathered a group of students—none of them Muslim—and he organized them to break the fast with her.
He didn’t just make sure there were dates available, or that the cafeteria could handle her schedule. He gave her something far more important: people.
Friends sat with her at sunset meals. Some of them tried fasting alongside her. One even passed out after a few hours. It was too much for him physically. But he tried.
They were sharing in a practice that wasn’t “theirs” in any formal sense, but had become theirs by love.
A Quaker chaplain, on a Christian campus, making sure a Muslim teenager didn’t have to practice her faith alone.
That’s not diversity as an abstract principle. That’s hospitality as a spiritual discipline.
And again, it’s neighborliness.
From stories to a question: Are we in each other’s futures?
In our conversation, I asked Najiba about her work as a peacemaker in some very hard conflicts. She said there’s a question she uses when she intervenes. She poses it to each side, about the other:
“Are you in each other’s futures?”
It’s a disarming question.
Think of how it would land in a broken marriage. In a church split. In a political movement at war with itself. In a neighborhood where ethnic or religious tensions simmer just below the surface.
Are you, in any meaningful way, planning for a future in which this other person—or group—is still there?
The bus driver and the Muslim father, in their modest way, answered that question “yes.” They were in each other’s futures at least long enough to share a farm, some livestock, and a relationship of mutual respect.
The Quaker chaplain and the Muslim student answered “yes” as well. He didn’t expect the presence of Muslims on that campus to be a one‑time curiosity. His actions were quietly making room for a future in which Muslims would belong there.
And that, I think, is where this stops being a charming interfaith anecdote, and starts becoming a mirror for our current moment in America.
Because in many corners of our life together, we are quietly answering that question “no.”
We draw our lines. We curate our newsfeeds. We “unfriend” and block. We talk about “those people”—whether “those people” are on the left, on the right, from another religion, another race, another country—as if their removal from the scene is an acceptable outcome.
It’s one thing to disagree passionately. It’s another thing to build an entire moral, social, and political framework around the assumption that the other side does not belong in the future you are trying to create.
Created in the image of God, we are meant to be face‑to‑face, not back‑to‑back. Yet it is possible—far too easy—to plan for a future where only “our kind” remain.
That’s not just polarization. It’s a quiet form of de‑creation.
Created in the image of God, called to neighborliness
The title of my show, “Created in the Image of God,” comes from Genesis:
“So God created mankind in his own image… male and female he created them.”
As I’ve reflected on those words over the years, I’ve come to see at least two things:
- God’s image is relational.
“Male and female he created them” is not an afterthought; it’s part of the image. We are made for connection. The two become one flesh. The community reflects the Creator. - God’s image is multi‑faceted.
The same God who, in Genesis 1, speaks galaxies into existence with a word, in Genesis 2 stoops down to shape a human being from dust and breathe into his nostrils. Transcendent and intimate. Infinite and personal. Many facets, one God.
Throughout human history, that same God has been reflected through many cultures, languages, and religious communities. That’s the conviction behind our “Facets of One” project: bringing together scriptures and prayers from different faiths—not to erase their differences, but to listen for the one divine voice that speaks through all sincere devotion.
Why does that matter here?
Because the little Muslim girl on the bus, the Christian bus driver, the Quaker chaplain, the fasting college students—they are all, in their own way, facets of one great reality: the leaven of God’s love already spread throughout the world.
Most of the time it doesn’t look dramatic. It looks like:
- A farm gate opened to a family that prays differently.
- A chaplain rearranging schedules so a student doesn’t have to break fast alone.
- A group of friends trying, and failing, to make it through a 14‑hour fast—but succeeding at something much more important: solidarity.
The question for us is whether we will notice that leaven, and join it.
Whose future are you in?
So let me bring Najiba’s question to you, and to myself:
- Whose future have you quietly decided you’re not in—and they’re not in yours?
- Is there a family member, a former friend, a church, a political tribe, a religious community about whom you have said, “I’m done”?
- Is there an entire category of people—immigrants, evangelicals, Muslims, secular progressives, conservatives—whom you cannot imagine sharing a good future with?
If we are to be peacemakers in a polarized world, we will have to answer that question differently.
We will have to decide, in very practical ways, that we are in each other’s futures.
Not because we suddenly agree on everything. The Quaker chaplain didn’t become Muslim; the Muslim student didn’t become Quaker. Mrs. Anderson didn’t adopt Islamic dietary laws; Najiba’s father didn’t abandon them.
They remained who they were, and yet they made room.
You and I can do the same. Here are a few starting points:
- Offer a resource across a boundary.
Ask yourself: What do I have—time, a skill, a professional network, a building, even a farm—that could serve someone whose beliefs or politics make me uncomfortable? Then offer it without strings. - Have your own “Ramadan moment.”
Is there someone in your orbit whose spiritual or cultural practice you don’t share? A friend observing Ramadan, Lent, the Jewish High Holy Days, Diwali? Ask them what that time means to them. Show up in some small way that says, “You won’t walk this alone.” - Listen to another facet.
Consider forming a small circle around Facets of One—a few friends from different backgrounds, willing to read and pray side by side, “without argument, without division.” Not to gloss over real differences, but to cultivate the habit of hearing the many voices that testify to one God.
These are small acts. But so was a little girl talking to her bus driver. So was a chaplain organizing a dinner.
Those small acts created futures in which Christians and Muslims, Quakers and immigrants, could live together a little more humanely—and a little more like the God in whose image they are made.
You are created in the image of God.
And God loves his creation.
The invitation is to love your neighbor enough to make sure they’re still in your future.
Coming up next week on Created in the Image of God
On next week’s episode, I’ll be joined by John Fella, who grew up on the north side of Chicago in what he jokingly calls a “Saturday Night Live skit” of a blue‑collar Catholic household. We’ll talk about how a truck‑driver dad and a very simple piece of advice—“Whatever happens, stay calm, take a breath, don’t panic”—shaped his approach to leadership, faith, and building community.
We’ll also explore why a self‑described “new age, chakras and meditation” guy, married to a Jewish woman, found himself in what he calls “church for atheists”—and what happened the night someone there prayed for him by name.
If you’re interested in how ordinary people find extraordinary grace in unexpected places, you won’t want to miss it.
