You could compare how programming works to translating between languages. Say you were on a desert island with 2 other people. You only speak French. Person number 1 (we'll call him Fred) only speaks French and Japanese. Person 2 (Bob) only speaks Japanese. Say you need to ask Bob to go help you gather some firewood. Imagine in this case you are the program and Bob is the computer. You say to Fred in French "Can you tell Bob to come help me." Fred translates into Japanese and asks Bob to help you. In this case Fred would be the compiler. He translates the request into something Bob can understand. That is sort of how a computer program works.
There is a good How Stuff Works article that explains things.
I personally didn't really understand how computers could work the way they do until I took a digital electronics class. Prior to that the whole idea of how computers could work at all for me. After I built a binary counter it all made sense.
