Pastor Clifford S. Stewart of Louisville, Kentucky, sent his parents a microwave oven one Christmas, back when the ovens were first coming on the market. Here's how he recalls the experience: "They were excited that now they, too, could be a part of the instant generation. When Dad unpacked the microwave and plugged it in, literally within seconds, the microwave transformed two smiles into frown! Even after reading the directions, they couldn't make it work. "Two days later, my mother was playing bridge with a friend and confessed her inability to get that microwave oven even to boil water. 'To get this darn thing to work,' she exclaimed, 'I really don't need better directions; I just needed my son to come along with the gift!'"

This same experience has been repeated a million times in our generation with computers and smart phones. I know a lot of you would like a son to come along with the device. Sometimes I feel like this life we live is one big complicated device and the operating system just to hard to understand. That's the gift of salvation. God didn't send complicated instructions for us to figure out; he sent his Son. He's all the help and instruction we need to make sense of it.