The following quote is drawn from The Book of Bebb, comprising four novels having as their central character Leo Bebb, who presided over a religious diploma mill in Florida as well as the Church of Holy Love, Inc.
BEBB SAYS, "THE KINGDOM of Heaven, it's like unto treasure hid in a field the which when a man hath found it, he hideth it and for joy thereof"—Bebb comes down so hard on joy it makes the machine rattle—"he goeth and selleth all he hath or ever hopes to hath and buyeth that field. Well, it's like you're poking around a junk shop, and inside a old humpback trunk with the lid half stove in you come across a pack of letters somebody's great granddad tied up with a string from a chum back home name of Abe Lincoln that's worth a clear five thousand bucks each if they're worth a dime. Now you tell me what a man would give to lay his hands on that trunk. Why he'd give his bottom dollar. He'd give his right arm for a treasure like that, and for the Kingdom of Heaven—Listen," Bebb says, "he'd give ten years, twenty years, off his life. You know why? Why because the Kingdom of Heaven, that's what it is. It's life. Not the kind of half-baked, moth-eaten life we most of us live most of the time but the real honest-to-God thing. Life with a capital L. It's the treasure a man spends all his born days looking for, no matter if he knows it or not. The Kingdom of Heaven, it's the treasure that up till a man finds it, every other treasure that comes his way doesn't amount to spit."
Bebb says, "The Kingdom comes by looking for it. The Kingdom comes sometimes by not looking for it too hard. There's times the Kingdom comes by it looking for you."
- Originally published in The Book of Bebb
