Deeply Loving Hands: Basket, Ark, and Church

While reading Genesis, I recently discovered that the Hebrew word for "ark" in the Noah story only occurs one other time in the Old Testament - it is the word used for the "basket" Moses' mother places him in when he is found by Pharaoh's daughter.  There are numerous other similarities between these two stories.  Both stories participate in ancient Near Eastern imagery of water as deadly and symbolic of chaos - the flood in the Noah story and the river for the killing of babies in the Moses story.  In both stories, Noah and Moses are delivered from this water through this vessel.  

The Christian church tradition associates the ark in the Noah story with the church.  Like the ark, "in" the church we are saved from death.  Seeing the similarities between the Noah and Moses stories, I was considering the Moses story from the perspective of the basket he is placed into as the church.  The church, in this story, is that vessel, crafted carefully by deeply loving hands with those materials which happened to be available, to deliver the smallest and most helpless of humans - a baby.  And in so doing, this vessel becomes an instrument of salvation for many, many, many more.

What if our churches viewed themselves as Moses' basket?  Thanks be to God for his deeply loving hands.