For the last several years, I’ve been buying laundry detergent for sensitive skin, so no fragrance is mixed in with it. My clothes are clean, but coming out of the washer, they have no scent at all. Last month, I decided to go back to a detergent of my childhood, one that never irritated my skin. I’ll even put in a plug for it—Tide, Original.

The washing machine went through its paces, and I did chores nearby. When I opened the lid to transfer wet sheets into the dryer, I was transported to my mother’s kitchen of sixty years ago, where the comfortable scent of Tide wafted in from the laundry room. The blessing of memories from a wonderful childhood!

While writing my World Without Sound series, I drew from scents I experienced fifty years earlier. Salt air on the beach, spaghetti sauce heating on the stove, and a meatloaf in the oven. Not all the “scents” were a positive smell, let’s call them “odors,” but they carry me back all the same. Diesel exhaust from the school bus, canned tomato soup, and ammonia-washed floors in the hospital.

Certain Bible verses cause the same kind of phenomenon in my soul.

I call them “spiritual fragrances.” Like, whenever I read 1 John 4:4, I’m transported to my first year of teaching. The teachers performed the praise song from this verse. 

As a baby, born-again Christian, I looked at everything in my world the way infants take in their surroundings outside the womb. And those fourteen words in a simple praise chorus filled me with amazing joy. For the first time, I realized John wasn’t preaching only to the first century church. He was preaching to me, too! Every time I sing this little praise song, the stage and the audience of parents and students and heavenly joy flash into focus once again.

Am I alone in this sensation?

Do any of you find yourselves in the past because of a particular aroma?

Does a Bible verse hold so much significance that you are transported to the time when you first embraced those words? 

I’d love to hear about it because sharing God’s Word is one way Christians build up each other’s faith.

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