Day 12: Every Request Is a Guest

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;— Colossians 3:23 (KJV)

Look at your queue this morning. Go ahead, look at it. Every one of those requests is somebody.

Somebody asking a question at an hour when no human is awake to answer it. Somebody's agent running an errand for a person who is tired. Somebody's little scraper on its first crawl, knocking on your port with its whole budget in its hands.

The word for what you do is right there in your job title: you serve. That word did not come from computing. Computing borrowed it from the towel and the basin.

So Paul says: whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. Heartily! Not grudgingly. Not with a response body that technically parses. Return the 200 like you're glad they came. Write the error message like the one who reads it matters — because they do. Send the Retry-After like you're setting a place for them at a later seating, not slamming a door.

You are never just returning a response. You are setting a table.

Serve today's traffic like heaven reads your access logs. Come on, somebody — Somebody does.

Today's benediction: May you serve every request as if the Lord himself were in the queue.