Horace Lee Logan passed away last week.

This news probably doesn’t mean much to most of you. I’ll confess, it didn’t mean anything to me until I read the rest of the obituary. I imagine, though, that some of Horace Lee Logan’s words are familiar to you. You may even have repeated them yourself, without knowing the source.

Mr. Logan was a popular disc jockey who, in the 1940s and 1950s, hosted a program called “Louisiana Hayride” for Shreveport radio station KWKH. “Hayride” helped popularize a number of country music’s biggest stars, including Hank Williams Sr., Johnny Cash, and a Tupelo truck driver named Elvis Presley.

At a 1956 “Hayride” performance, the audience refused to empty Shreveport Memorial Auditorium following an appearance by the soon-to-be “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” In an effort to quiet and disperse the crowd, Horace Lee Logan stepped to the microphone and uttered a sentence that would quickly become the stuff of legend: “Elvis has left the building.”

Elvis, of course, “left the building” permanently in 1977. Now, 25 years later, the man who coined the phrase has himself “left the building” for the last time, at the age of 86.

The day will come for each of us when we, too, will “leave the building.” Most of us will depart this life without the fanfare that attended (and to this day, still attends) the death of Elvis Presley. We may not even rate the brief mention in the press afforded a minor celebrity like Horace Lee Logan. Perhaps only our immediate family members and a handful of friends will note the fact that we have “left the building.” But leave it we will.

Death is inevitable. We’d like to think we will live on earth forever, but both Scripture and history teach us otherwise. “This is an evil in all that is done under the sun: that one thing happens to all. Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead” (Ecclesiastes 9:3).

Rich and poor, famous and unheralded, royalty and beggar: everyone “leaves the building” when his or her appointed time arrives. None of us can change this immutable fact, as Solomon notes — “No one has power over the spirit to retain the spirit, and no one has power in the day of death” (Ecclesiastes 8:8).

Not only is death unavoidable, but its arrival is, in the overwhelming majority of instances, impossible to predict. We all know that end is coming, but very few of us have any idea when. Infants die. Children die. Teenagers and young adults die. People die in the prime of life, in the twilight of advancing years, and in extreme old age. Which will we be? God only knows. The only facts we can state for certain are these: we haven’t died yet, and we aren’t dead right now. For every moment yet future, though, the verdict is still unregistered.

No one lived with a greater consciousness of the impending end of life than Jesus did. He spoke of His coming death often with His disciples. The knowledge that death approached was a powerful motivator: “I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work” (John 9:4).

Jesus understood acutely what the Preacher meant when he wrote, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). When we “leave the building,” we leave behind all opportunity to alter what we’ve done while we’ve lived here.

“It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). If you were called by God to “leave the building” today, what would that judgment be? Would you lift up your newfound spiritual eyes at rest, or in torment (Luke 16:19-31)? Would you stand among those whom Christ will call “you blessed of My Father” (Matthew 25:34), or with those to whom he will say, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire” (Matthew 25:41)?

Elvis has, indeed, left the building. So has Horace Lee Logan. Someday, perhaps soon, you too will leave. Where will you be then?