"Your wagon tracks* drip with fatness"

“You have crowned the year with bounty, and your wagon tracks* drip with fatness.” Psalm 65.11

David’s words, here, are to me some of the most delightful in the Bible. Not for their theological precision or doctrinal clarity. Psalm 65.11 is not that kind of verse. What it is, though, is a marvelous picture of the goodness of God to His people.

Picture what David is saying in the latter verses of Psalm 65. It has been a year of abundant rain (v.9). The soil is soft and blackened with moisture (v.10). And the grain, the grapes, and the flocks cover the hillsides like a cloak (vv.12-13). Every stalk of corn is in full ear. The grape vines are heavy and weighed down with fruit. The sheep are fat, and their coats are thick and white. God has “crowed the year” with His “bounty”!

And here comes the farmer with his wagon, trundling along the dirt road that runs through his farmland, harvesting all God’s goodness into the back of the cart. Indeed, the cart is so overloaded with corn and grapes, with wool and lamb chops; and the freshly watered ground is so soft and pliable, that the wagon wheels are furrowing ruts into the soil as the farmer rides along! “Wagon tracks” are being created by the weight of the blessings piled high in the wagon! Indeed, says David, the wagon is so full that wine and kernels of corn and fat from the mutton are actually running over the sides of the wagon and dripping down the sideboards into the “wagon tracks” below. That’s how bountiful the harvest has been – the wagon is bursting at the seams!

And that, says David, is how bountifully God deals with His people … and in so many ways! His wagon tracks drip with fatness! His blessings to us are pressed down, shaken out, and overflowing! God has spread an absolute feast of blessings before His people!

Sometimes the feast is literally comprised of grapes and corn, of wool and mutton. How blessed we are to be able to sit down to the kind of meals to which we are so often privy? Indeed, church fellowship meals, with all their bounty spread on the long tables, ought to remind us of just how good we have it. God’s wagon tracks, so often, literally drip with fatness and fruit of every kind!

But God’s bounty is even more profound when we consider how He forgives our transgressions (v.3), and brings us near to Himself (v.4), and makes us members of His household. What a blessing that we should be called the children of God; that we should sit at the table of all His spiritual delights; that we should have the new wine of the Holy Spirit living within us; that we should have the grain of the Scriptures to nourish our souls; that we should even be able to feast on the meat of the Word! Truly we have been given, as Paul put it, “every spiritual blessing.” Truly God’s wagon tracks drip with fatness!

And let us not forget that this cornucopia of blessings; this filling up of our spiritual wagons comes to us at the cost of God’s dear Son. It is because He died for us that we are adopted into God’s family. It is because of His great love that we have the privilege of prayer. It is His blood that has sealed our pardon and brought us into this life of blessing! O, there are a great many blessings piled up in the carts of God’s goodness to us. There are a great many things that we find so abundantly supplied that they are practically dripping down the sides of our wagons. But the greatest thing that ever dripped down the sideboards of God’s wagon was the blood of His Son! And if God has given us His Son, then we have bounty indeed!

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*The NASB translation is "Your paths drip with fatness", but the NASB footnote says that "paths" is "I.e. wagon tracks".