“They journeyed from Refidim and they arrived in the Desert of Sinai.”
(Shemos 19:2)

Hasn’t it already been said that they came to the Sinai Desert? Rather the Torah compares their traveling from Refidim to their arrival in the Sinai Desert. Just as they came to the Sinai Desert in repentance so too they traveled [from Refidim] in repentance.
From this we can learn that with regard to any sacred matter the more a person prepares himself for it the more he will become worthy of it. There is proof of this in Bava Metzia 85b which relates how Rav Chiya prevented the Torah from being forgotten by the Jewish People by teaching it to the children.
To do this he planted and cultivated flax until it was ready to be made into threads then he harvested the crops and soaked them in water dried and separated the fibers twisted them into threads and used the threads to make hunter’s nets. Using those nets he trapped deer brought them home slaughtered them and distributed their meat to the poor. Then he took the deer hides and made them into parchment on which he wrote the text of the Five Books of the Torah.
Once the Chumashim had been written Rav Chiya traveled to all the cities where there were no rebbeim for young boys. In each city he taught the five Chumashim and the six sedarim of Mishnayos to children who lived there. The Gemara adds that when Rabi Yehudah Hanasi saw everything that Rav Chiya had done he declared “How great are Chiya’s deeds!” (Ha’emek Davar)
One afternoon while the rain pelted the windows we were trading storm experiences how umbrellas had been blown away and knapsacks had been soaked. I started to share the story of Hillel in the snow but hadn’t gotten far when my five-year-old interrupted me “It doesn’t start that way. It starts like this: ‘Hillel was a woodcutter and one day he couldn’t cut any wood because there was too much mud and rain so he decided to go to the beis medrash.…’”
How did she know so many details I’d never learned? She learned them in school.
My older daughters have already given up asking me for help with their Chumash. My sons go directly to their father.
The question is asked: If Rav Chiya’s goal was to teach Torah to Jewish children he could simply have bought parchment in the market processed it properly and written the text of the Chumashim on it. Why did he make such an effort and invest so much time in preparations that seem extraneous?
Because Rav Chiya wanted to strengthen the power of kedushah in the scrolls so they’d have the ability to influence the hearts of the children. He therefore began by dedicating his actions for sacred purposes long before the time mandated by the halachah when the hides are processed. Even when he planted the flax seeds Rav Chiya intended the planting for the sake of learning Torah with Jewish children and he made this the intention of every action associated with the preparations. Thus the entire process was done with the purest and holiest of intentions for the sake of the mitzvah of talmud Torah. (ibid.)
Baruch Hashem today we have excellent schools. I might have thought there wasn’t much left for me to do for their education — but then I learned about Rav Chiya.
Suddenly I realized just how extensive and profound is the task of mothers.
All the children in our neighborhood read the same Chumashim hear the same lessons and write the same notes word for word in their notebooks.
But each has a different heart and soul. Some hearts are wide open others are sealed. Sometimes the soul thirstily drinks in what it’s taught other times it’s barricaded shut.
I am my children’s “Rav Chiya ” and the “parchment” I have to painstakingly create is their hearts and souls. My job is to prepare those parchments with a massive investment of love and dedication faithfully plant the seeds of faith harvest the results by setting a personal example and weave it all together to form thick cords of emunah and bitachon.
May we all merit to be our children’s “Rav Chiya.”