Deuteronomy 28 is the chapter of blessings. The word occurs in it about 10 times. There are blessings for God’s people, blessings that will be poured out, blessings abundant. Here is an interesting description of the flow of those blessings as blessings that “overtake thee.”

When you are overtaken by someone or something you can only watch. Maybe you are surprised or you look in awe at the thing that passes you. It goes before you and you can’t keep up with it. God’s blessings are like that. We stand in awe of them and can only watch as they flood past us and surround us and go before us preparing the way as we serve the Lord. The saint does not travel on his own, the Shepherd is with him. Goodness and mercy follow us every day, but also our Good Shepherd sends blessings which continually catch up with us.

It is stressed in the text that it is only the pilgrim in the path of obedience that experiences this glorious sight. The rebellious dwell in a dry land, in a spiritual wasteland of awful dryness. Those that hearken to God are “like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not” (Isaiah 58:11).