At the end of February 2020, Larry and Ann Thomas left their home in Issaquah, Washington, for a three-week vacation visiting family in Colorado and Texas. News of the coronavirus pandemic was slowly spreading. By the middle of March 2020 the world had changed and the global pandemic was in full swing. The Thomases decided to shelter in place in Flower Mound, Texas, for the next six weeks. On March 17, 2020, when Larry returned to his work as the interim pastor at Sammamish Hills Lutheran Church in Sammamish, Washington, it was from a makeshift office in Texas, not his office in Sammamish. Working remotely, Pastor Thomas began organizing weekly virtual prayer gatherings and Bible studies. In order to connect with the congregation, he started writing pastoral letters as a way of reflecting on the intersection of faith, hope, and love while living through the pandemic. Lily Packed a Facemask is a chronicle of one pastor's commitment to engage with a congregation during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Grounded in biblical texts, Thomas takes the threads of a variety of writers and contemporary resources and weaves a tapestry of living life faithfully in the midst of a year of constant changes and challenges.
Industry Reviews
“This collection of spiritual and biographical essays offers a refreshing and hope-filled contrast to the hysterical and near-apocalyptic tone of most contemporary reflections on life in the age of COVID-19. To perceive the workings of a merciful God in the midst of adversity has always been prized as the sign of a true Christian contemplative; in these essays, the reader is invited to share the fruit of Pastor Thomas’s contemplative gift.”
—Luke Dysinger, OSB, Saint John’s Seminary
“Pastor Thomas has a lovely way of expressing God’s grace and love in a warm, accessible, and authentic way. In each essay, he invites us to be more faithful and grounded as we see and experience life in all of its complexities. While the pandemic will one day be over, this book will continue to provide wisdom and good news to those who read it.”
—Shelley Bryan Wee, Bishop, Northwest Washington Synod, ELCA
“Throughout the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, I hungered for words to help me cope and thrive in spite of sheltering in place. Pastor Thomas’s weekly letters to his congregation connected the Scriptures, contemporary writers, and personal experiences with everyday feelings of loss, powerlessness, and self-pity. This devotional is timeless with encouraging messages of hope, faith, and love.”
—Louise Evenson, retired Educator
“Christian leaders and congregations will highly benefit from Lily Packed a Facemask. . . . With his intellectual agility, his ability to draw from years of shepherding church congregations, and his sense of humor, Thomas offers the family of believers a lifeboat to navigate the sea of confusion and debilitating chaos caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
—Nyamutera Joseph, Founder and Director, Rabagirana Ministries
“Larry Thomas looks upon the world with ‘the eyes of (his) heart enlightened” (Eph 1:18), seeing in the ordinary the extraordinary presence of divine grace. In Lily Packed a Facemask, he writes with simple clarity and gentle joy as he shares his vision of God in our midst even as we lived through a pandemic together. This book comes out of a specific time, but it shares timeless wisdom.”
—Delmer Chilton, author of The Gospel According to Aunt Mildred: Stories of Family and Faith
