My husband and I have been staring death in the face for the past couple of months. We were first reminded of its presence the afternoon our next-door neighbor told us his wife was going downhill quickly after a two-year battle with brain cancer.

Death called again the day we noticed the medical van in their driveway advertising hospital beds, wheelchairs, and oxygen. Then came the newspaper obituary and the knock on our door: Our neighbor’s wife had died at home on Saturday, surrounded by her family.

A couple weeks after the visitation, death visited again. This time it was our neighbor’s dad who was taken.

And suddenly I can’t escape the cold, hard truth that all of us share this destiny of death. Every time I look at my neighbor’s house, I am reminded of the reality of death. And while none of this is pleasant, I’m glad for this sobering reminder. As the teacher says in Ecclesiastes 7:2:

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.

The wise will live with the reality of death ever before them.

There was an acronym, YOLO, that gained popularity around 2011. “You only live once” served as encouragement for reckless living and obscured our destiny of death.

If we had a chance to sit down with the writer of the wisdom book Ecclesiastes, I believe he’d tell us that YOLO had it all wrong. Rather, our mantra for life should be YODO: “You only die once.”

And After Death . . .

Why should we think about our inevitable death while we’re still alive, even though none of us really want to? Because we have a Creator, and we will meet Him face to face on the other side of death and give account for the way we lived our days:

It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment (Heb. 9:27).

That’s why, after twelve chapters, the author of Ecclesiastes sums up the teacher’s words this way, so we’re sure to understand his main call to action:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil (Eccl. 12:13–14).

So if you want to continue living as if YOLO is your motto, go for it. But don’t say you weren’t warned:

Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment (Eccl. 11:9).

The teacher tells us we are to enjoy good while we live, recognizing these things are God’s gifts to us, remnants from life before humanity’s fall into sin.

I wonder, when you examine your life, have you been living as if YOLO were the motto of your life or YODO? Are you living recklessly, mindless of your Creator, mindless of the final judgment where you will stand before God and give account for every thought and deed?

How would living with the reminder of death and judgment ever before you change the way you live each day?