I love a blank page.

The blinking cursor.

The silence before anything takes shape.

I know it scares some people.

There’s something unsettling about a wide-open space, whether physical or digital. The vast whiteness asks questions we’d rather avoid:

Where do I start? What do I say? What should I write down?

To write something is to commit. And commitment is vulnerable.

That’s what keeps many of us from journaling, from reflecting, from speaking out loud the deepest truths within us.

It’s not just fear of sounding dumb. It’s fear of being seen.

To put something down—anything—is to step into a journey of discovery. To form a thought. To name a desire. To risk vulnerability.

Because when we start to write or pray or confess—we begin to be formed. And formation is costly.

But here’s the surprising twist: the Bible has a word for that blank page.

Gōlem.

Yes—pronounced just like Gollum, that deformed, haunting figure from The Lord of the Rings.

Once a hobbit named Sméagol, Gollum was twisted by obsession and secrecy, reduced to base desire, losing not only his name but his humanity.

And yet the Hebrew gōlem (Strong’s Concordance 1564) doesn’t mean monster.

It means unformed substance.

The word appears only once in Scripture—Psalm 139v16:

“Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.” (ESV)

In Hebrew, galmi—from galam—describes something embryonic, hidden, unfinished.

Like a rough sketch. A blank canvas.

Or a soul yet to be shaped.

David is saying: Even then, Lord, You saw me.

When I was only potential—before I had limbs or lungs, before I breathed my first breath—You looked at me the way a master artist looks at raw marble.

Like Michelangelo staring at stone and already seeing David within it.

You had a vision of who I might become.

You wrote stories about me in Your book.

You formed days to shape me like a potter forms clay.

That word formed—yuṣ·ṣā·rū (Strong’s 3335)—comes from yatsar:

To form, fashion, mold—like hands pressing into soft earth.

Psalm 139 is a masterpiece of self-reflection. David begins with a simple declaration:

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me.” (v1)

But by the end, he’s no longer just describing. He’s inviting:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart!

Try me and know my thoughts!

See if there be any grievous way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting!” (vv23–24)

It’s a full circle of surrender. From being searched—to asking to be searched.

From being known—to longing to be known.

And hidden in this closing prayer is a deeper question—one I imagine David asking in the quiet:

Have I become the person You envisioned me to be?

When I was yet unformed?

When I was an embryo?

Even before that—when I was only a thought in Your mind’s eye, O God?

David doesn’t hold back.

He lets God see it all.

Even his anger.

“Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?

I hate them with complete hatred.” (vv21–22)

David’s blood runs hot with rage. But he doesn’t edit it.

He expresses it before the Lord, trusting that the safest place for his rawest emotions is God’s presence.

This—this unfiltered honesty—is how David was known by God.

He allowed Him in.

He allowed the oil of the anointing to run down and touch every thought, every emotion, every motive.

He didn’t leave anything hidden. He exposed it all.

And he invited God to keep shaping him.

David knew the truth: We are all still in process.

All of us are a kind of gōlem—unformed in places, unfinished in others.

And the difference between formation and deformation is simple:

David invited God in.

Gollum did not.

Gollum hid. He isolated. He clung to control. And in doing so, he devolved.

He became less than he was created to be.

Less human. Less whole.

David surrendered. He laid himself open on the altar like a blank page.

And that posture—that holy vulnerability—allowed him to be formed.

So may we, like David, show up to God like a blank page.

Unfinished. Honest. Clay in the potter’s hand.

Willing to be searched.

Willing to be shaped.

Willing to be led through the days God has already formed for us—

So that we may become like Him…

and not be deformed, like Gollum, into something less than human.

Practice

To become known by God is to come as you are.

To bring every thought, emotion, desire, and fear before Him.

So here’s your invitation: take ten minutes today and open a blank screen or a white page.

Don’t overthink it. Don’t try to be profound.

Just start writing what’s real. Name your hopes. Your griefs. Your hungers. Your anger.

Let it be raw. Let it be yours. Let it be seen.

This is not just a journaling exercise. This is how we begin to be formed.

Not conformed by the pressure of culture.

Not deformed by the weight of unspoken pain.

But shaped—day by day—by the Potter’s hands.

He is gentle.

He is skilled.

And He still sees the work of art He imagined in you—countless millennia ago.

So place yourself in His hands.

Let the chisel fall where it must.

Let the oil run deep.

And become formed.

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