The Landlord Who Tore Up the Lease

In 2019, a landlord named David Perez in San Antonio bought a small apartment complex on Guadalupe Street — twelve units, mostly elderly tenants on fixed incomes. The previous owner had been raising rents every six months, and the residents lived in constant dread of the next envelope slipped under the door.

Perez called a meeting in the courtyard. He brought a stack of the old leases and, one by one, fed them through a paper shredder. Then he handed each tenant a new agreement: a locked rate, no increases for as long as they lived there. No conditions. No performance reviews. No penalties for late payment during hard months. He signed every copy himself, framed one, and hung it in the lobby where everyone — including himself — would see it daily.

"I put it there for me," he told a reporter. "So on the days I'm tempted to run this place like a business, I remember what I promised."

Notice what God does in Genesis 9. He doesn't negotiate terms with Noah. He doesn't attach conditions. The Almighty makes a unilateral covenant with every living creature and then hangs the rainbow in the sky — not as a reminder for us, but for Himself. "When I see it," God says, "I will remember." The God who needs nothing chose to give Himself a reminder, because His promise to you is that permanent, that personal, and that sure.